def char_to_string(ll):
    """Convert 2-D list of chars to 1-D list of strings."""

    # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23618218/numpy-bytes-to-plain-string
    # bytes_string.decode('UTF-8')

    # We might be able to do this a bit more shorthand as we did in Python2.x
    # i.e return [''.join(x).strip() for x in ll]

    # But this works for now.

    result = []
    for i in range(len(ll)):
        x = ll[i]
        string = ''
        for j in range(len(x)):
            c = x[j]
            if type(c) == str:
                string += c
            else:
                string += c.decode()            

        result.append(string.strip())
        
    return result