In http://docs.python.org/release/3.2.3/reference/datamodel.html#the-standard-t... the description of Bytes sequence type: A bytes object is an immutable array. The items are 8-bit bytes, represented by integers in the range 0 <= x < 256. Bytes literals (like b'abc' and the built-in function bytes() can be used to construct bytes objects. Also, bytes objects can be decoded to strings via the decode() method. Missing closing parenthesis (or rewrite or whatever): A bytes object is an immutable array. The items are 8-bit bytes, represented by integers in the range 0 <= x < 256. Bytes literals (like b'abc'*)* and the built-in function bytes() can be used to construct bytes objects. Also, bytes objects can be decoded to strings via the decode() method. Saw this in 3.2.3, but it also seems to still exist in 3.4.0a0 docs.