A very common error you may come across while using Python is the TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not ‘str’. This type of error is generally caused by mistakes when you trying to pickle an object. This blog contains an efficient way to fix this error as well as a section containing a list of known errors related to this error.

When Do You Get The Error “TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not ‘str’”?

Are you trying to read a txt file and looking for a specific word in it? And here is the code you are attempting to run:

with open(r"F:\Python Script\ExeDemo\player.txt", "rb") as file:
players = file.readlines()

for plyr in players:
if "Kartik" in plyr:
print("Kartik is Found")

However, you may encounter the following issue:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "f:\Python Script\ExeDemo\app.py", line 5, in <module>
if "Kartik" in plyr:
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

The error indicates that you attempted to reach an object as though it was a string when it should have been accessed as a list of bytes. The issue is that Python has no way of checking for a string in a bytes object. 

How To Fix The Error “TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not ‘str’”?

Approach 1: Rather than binary read mode, open the file in read mode

The easiest solution is to open our file in read mode rather than binary read mode. It’s similar to this. Next, you can compare strings to each other.

with open(r"F:\Python Script\ExeDemo\player.txt", "r") as file: #just Use r Instead of rb
players = file.readlines()

for plyr in players:
if "Kartik" in plyr:
print("Kartik is Found")

Now, you have fixed your error.

Approach 2: Decode the Byte Object to ‘str’ 

Excepting the approach mentioned above, there is another way for you to solve the error “TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not ‘str’”. It is to decode the Byte Object to ‘str’. Look at the following example to understand more about this solution.

a=("Hi This is byte encoded").encode()
b=("Hi")
if b in a.decode():
print("Sub String")

After doing that, your error will be completely resolved and your program will work well without any errors. So, what are you waiting without applying this method for your problem to get your desired results?

Approach 3: Byte object typecast to “str”

Byte object typecast to “str” also is a great way for you to solve your problem. Let’s look at the following code:

a=("Hi This is byte encoded").encode()
b=("Hi")
if b in str(a):
print("Sub String")

Conclusion

We hope you will enjoy our article about fixing the error “TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not ‘str’”. We know that this error can be frustrating to deal with, so we hope that our information has helped you fix it. If you have any other questions or concerns about working with Conda, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading; we are always excited when one of our posts can provide useful information on a topic like this!

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