Ensure data is converted to strings

This is required for comparisons, as bytes != string.

Author: dschwoerer

xbout/load.py

@@ -185,7 +185,10 @@ def attrs_to_dict(obj, section):
             sectionlength = len(section)
             for key in list(obj.attrs):
                 if key[:sectionlength] == section:
-                    result[key[sectionlength:]] = obj.attrs.pop(key)
+                    val = obj.attrs.pop(key)
+                    if isinstance(val, bytes):
+                        val = val.decode()
+                    result[key[sectionlength:]] = val
             return result
 
         def attrs_remove_section(obj, section):

xbout/utils.py

@@ -69,6 +69,7 @@ def _separate_metadata(ds):
 
     # Save metadata as a dictionary
     metadata_vals = [ds[var].values.item() for var in scalar_vars]
+    metadata_vals = [x.decode() if isinstance(x, bytes) else x for x in metadata_vals]
     metadata = dict(zip(scalar_vars, metadata_vals))
 
     # Add default values for dimensions to metadata. These may be modified later by