The Python Oracle

TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str' when writing to a file in Python 3

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Music by Eric Matyas
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Track title: Breezy Bay

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Chapters
00:00 Typeerror: A Bytes-Like Object Is Required, Not 'Str' When Writing To A File In Python 3
00:49 Accepted Answer Score 814
01:29 Answer 2 Score 77
02:05 Answer 3 Score 350
02:26 Answer 4 Score 34
02:57 Thank you

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Full question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3305...

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Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

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Tags
#python #python3x #string #file #byte

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 814


You opened the file in binary mode:

with open(fname, 'rb') as f:

This means that all data read from the file is returned as bytes objects, not str. You cannot then use a string in a containment test:

if 'some-pattern' in tmp: continue

You'd have to use a bytes object to test against tmp instead:

if b'some-pattern' in tmp: continue

or open the file as a textfile instead by replacing the 'rb' mode with 'r'.




ANSWER 2

Score 350


You can encode your string by using .encode()

Example:

'Hello World'.encode()

As the error describes, in order to write a string to a file you need to encode it to a byte-like object first, and encode() is encoding it to a byte-string.




ANSWER 3

Score 77


Like it has been already mentioned, you are reading the file in binary mode and then creating a list of bytes. In your following for loop you are comparing string to bytes and that is where the code is failing.

Decoding the bytes while adding to the list should work. The changed code should look as follows:

with open(fname, 'rb') as f:
    lines = [x.decode('utf8').strip() for x in f.readlines()]

The bytes type was introduced in Python 3 and that is why your code worked in Python 2. In Python 2 there was no data type for bytes:

>>> s=bytes('hello')
>>> type(s)
<type 'str'>



ANSWER 4

Score 34


You have to change from wb to w:

def __init__(self):
    self.myCsv = csv.writer(open('Item.csv', 'wb')) 
    self.myCsv.writerow(['title', 'link'])

to

def __init__(self):
    self.myCsv = csv.writer(open('Item.csv', 'w'))
    self.myCsv.writerow(['title', 'link'])

After changing this, the error disappears, but you can't write to the file (in my case). So after all, I don't have an answer?

Source: How to remove ^M

Changing to 'rb' brings me the other error: io.UnsupportedOperation: write