How To Resolve TypeError: Byte Indices Must Be Integers Or Slices, Not Str In Python

If you get the TypeError: byte indices must be integers or slices, not str, don’t worry. I will provide two solutions that convert the byte object to a string and a list and then perform a slice on two data types. Read the following article.

What causes the TypeError: byte indices must be integers or slices, not str?

TypeError: Python throws this error when you perform an unsupported operation on an object with an invalid data type.

The TypeError: byte indices must be integers or slices, not str happens because you use string as the index to access byte object. 

Example:

# 'byte' object
byteObj = b'LEARNSHAREIT website'
myString = 'visit learnshareit'

# Access the index of the 'byte' object with a string
print(byteObj[myString])

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "./prog.py", line 6, in <module>
    print(byteObj[myString])
TypeError: byte indices must be integers or slices, not str

How to solve this error?

Convert the ‘byte’ object to string

I convert the ‘byte‘ object to string using the str function and do a slice when the object has a string data type that won’t throw an error.

Example:

• Create a ‘byte’ object.
• Convert the object to string data type using the str() function.
• Perform a slice on the string.

byteObj = b'LEARNSHAREIT website'

# Use the str() function to convert byte object to string object
byteObj = str(byteObj , 'UTF-8')

print('Sliced element:', byteObj[0])

Output:

Sliced element: L

Or do a slice to get multiple elements on the string following the formula:

[start:end]

Parameters:

• start: is the starting position to get the value. If left blank, the default is to get from the beginning of the tuple.
• end: end position. If left blank, all values ​​in the tuple will be taken.

Example:

byteObj = b'LEARNSHAREIT website'

# Use the str() function to convert byte object to string object
byteObj = str(byteObj , 'UTF-8')

print('Sliced string:', byteObj[0:5])

Output:

Sliced string: LEARN

Perform a slice on the list

The two most possible data types for performing slicing are string and list. In this method number two, I will convert the ‘byte’ object to string type, convert it to list type, and then perform a slice on the list.

Example:

• Create a ‘byte’ object.
• Convert the object to string data type using the str() function.
• Then convert the string data type to a list using the list function.
• Perform a slice on the list.

byteObj = b'LEARNSHAREIT website'

# Use the str() function to convert byte object to string object.
byteObj = str(byteObj)

# Perform a slice on the list.
myList = list(byteObj)
print('Sliced list:', myList[0])

Output:

Sliced string: b

Or do a slice to get multiple elements on the list

Example:

byteObj = b'LEARNSHAREIT website'

# Use the str() function to convert byte object to a string object
byteObj = str(byteObj)

# Perform a slice on the list
myList = list(byteObj)

print('Sliced list:', myList[0:5])

Output:

Sliced list: ['b', "'", 'L', 'E', 'A']

Summary

Hopefully, through the article, you have an idea to solve the TypeError: byte indices must be integers or slices, not str. If you have any questions or other ways, don’t hesitate to comment below. Thank you for reading.

Maybe you are interested:

• TypeError: __init__() should return None, not ‘X’ in Python
• TypeError: ‘bool’ object is not subscriptable in Python
• TypeError: list indices must be integers or slices, not dict

Jason Wilson

My name is Jason Wilson, you can call me Jason. My major is information technology, and I am proficient in C++, Python, and Java. I hope my writings are useful to you while you study programming languages.

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Name of the university: HHAU
Major: IT
Programming Languages: C++, Python, Java