
In Node.js, the **`Buffer.toString()`** method is used to decode or convert a buffer to a string, according to the specified character encoding type. Converting a buffer to a string is known as **encoding**, and converting a string to a buffer is known as **decoding**.

#   
#  Syntax
```
Buffer.toString( encoding, start, end )
```
#   
## Parameters

* `encoding`: This is the format in which the buffer data has to be encoded. The encodings supported by Node.js include `utf8`, `utf16le`, and `latin1`. 
>`uft8` is the default if `encoding` is not specified.

* `start`: This references the beginning data of the buffer. It starts from 0, meaning that the first data starts from 0. 
>The default value is 0.

* `end`: This is the last index of the buffer data. 
>The default value is `Buffer.length`.

##  
## Example
In the example below, we create a `Buffer` with the `Buffer.from()` method. Then, we access the `Buffer` data and decode the `Buffer`.

// Create a Buffer
const ourBuffer = Buffer.from("edpresso");

// log out Buffer
console.log(ourBuffer);

// decode Buffer
console.log(ourBuffer.toString())

#     
## How to specify encoding
In the code above, we decode our buffer to a string. Note that we do not specify any encoding. Now, let's specify some encoding.



// Create a Buffer
const ourBuffer = Buffer.from("edpresso");

// log out Buffer
console.log(ourBuffer);

// decode Buffer
console.log(ourBuffer.toString("utf8"))
console.log(ourBuffer.toString("utf16le"))
console.log(ourBuffer.toString("latin1"))


#     
## How to specify start and end parameters
As noted earlier, when the `start` and `end` parameters are not provided, the default `0` and `Buffer.length` are used as the `start` and `end` parameters. Hence, we have the complete data when we decode the buffer. Now, let's specify `start` and `end`.

// Create a Buffer
const ourBuffer = Buffer.from("edpresso");

// log out Buffer
console.log(ourBuffer);

// decode Buffer but only first 3 data of Buffer
console.log(ourBuffer.toString("utf8", 0, 3))


What is the Node.js Buffer.toString() method?

Syntax

Parameters

Example

How to specify encoding

How to specify start and end parameters