[Tutor] In a pickle over pickles….Python 3

[Joe Batt]

Hi All,Sorry to trouble you all again with more nooby problems! Only been programming a week so still all a haze especially since self taught…..
I am opening a url and saving it to a file on my computer, then I am trying to pickle it. I have written the url file to a file on my computer then opened it and assigned the contents to a var 'filecontents' and tried to pickle it it is giving the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):  File "/Users/joebatt/Desktop/python/pickling puzzle 5.py", line 39, in <module>    geturlfile(urlfile)  File "/Users/joebatt/Desktop/python/pickling puzzle 5.py", line 28, in geturlfile    pickle.dump(filecontents,pickledfile)TypeError: must be str, not bytes
Yet I tested the variable filecontents using   print (type(file contents))  and it is saying that it is a str yet the error seems to indicate it is a byte, can anyone point me in the right direction please?
(I know my coding is very untidy and verbose, sorry I am very new and at the moment I have to think in baby steps with little knowledge!)
Joe
####################################################################  Pickle an object- ###################################################################
import pickleimport urllib
def geturlfile(urlfile):#gets the user URL from main opens it and saves it to var fileurl    from urllib.request import urlopen    fileurl=urlopen(urlfile)#opens the file on computer and writes the var fileurl to it    html_file=open('///Users/joebatt/Desktop/python/puzzle5.txt','w')    for line in fileurl.readlines():        linestring=line.decode("utf-8") #ensures written in string not byte        html_file.write(linestring)    html_file.close() #closes the puzzle file#just prints file to check its correct    html_file=open('///Users/joebatt/Desktop/python/puzzle5.txt','r')    filecontents=html_file.read()    html_file.close()    print (filecontents)    print (type(filecontents))
#pickles the file filecontents containing the url file    pickledfile=open('///Users/joebatt/Desktop/python/pickledpuzzle5.txt','w')    pickle.dump(filecontents,pickledfile)    pickledfile.close()    
            return ()
    
# Main programurlfile=input('Please input the URL ')geturlfile(urlfile) 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/attachments/20111118/7dcb43c6/attachment-0001.html>