Python 3: Convert string from utf-8 to ascii : <p>I am using Python 3.x and have a string that contains utf-8 characters, like this:</p>

<pre><code>link='https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com'
</code></pre>

<p>I would now like to convert the string to ascii, so that it reads '<a href="https://www.google.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.google.com</a>'. How can I achieve this? I have tried </p>

<pre><code>link.decode('utf-8')
</code></pre>

<p>which throws the exception:</p>

<pre><code>AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode'
</code></pre>

<p>Is there not an easy way to simply decode a string containing utf-8 characters to plain ascii characters?</p>
