New submission from J_Tom_Moon_79 <jtm.moon.forum.user+python@gmail.com>: method xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring from module returns type bytes. The documentation reads """Returns an encoded string containing the XML data.""" (from http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#xml.etree.Ele... as of 2011-01-18) ======================================================= Here is a test program: ------------------------------------------------------- #!/usr/bin/python # created for python 3.1 import sys print(sys.version) # for help verifying version tested from xml.etree import ElementTree sampleinput = """<?xml version="1.0"?><Hello></Hello>""" xmlobj = ElementTree.fromstring(sampleinput) type(xmlobj) xmlstr = ElementTree.tostring(xmlobj,'utf-8') print("xmlstr value is '", xmlstr, "'", sep="") print("xmlstr type is '", type(xmlstr), "'", sep="") ------------------------------------------------------- test program output: ------------------------------------------------------- 3.1.3 (r313:86834, Nov 27 2010, 18:30:53) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] xmlstr value is 'b'<Hello />'' xmlstr type is '<class 'bytes'>' ======================================================= This cheap "fix" for this bug may be simply be a change in documentation. However, a method called "tostring" really should return something nearer to the built-in str. ---------- assignee: docs@python components: Documentation, XML messages: 126506 nosy: JTMoon79, docs@python priority: normal severity: normal status: open title: xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring returns type bytes, expected type str type: behavior versions: Python 3.1 _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue10942> _______________________________________