The b-symbol read channel is motivated by the limitations of the reading process in high density data storage systems. The corresponding new metric is a generalization of the Hamming metric known as the b-symbol weight metric and has become an important object in coding theory. In this paper, the general b-symbol weight enumerator formula for irreducible cyclic codes is presented by using the Gaussian period and a new invariant #U (b, j, N 1 ). The related b-symbol weight hierarchies {d 1 (C), d 2 (C), . . . , d K (C)} (K = dim(C)) are given for some cases. The shortened codes which are optimal from some classes of irreducible cyclic codes are given, where the shorten set T is the complementary set of b-symbol support of some codeword with the minimal b-symbol weight.