title: Dealing with a string and byte in python
body: <p>I'm working with some python code, and I can't seem to figure out how to get a byte representation, and a string variable to work together.</p>
  
  <p>I have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>secret = b'a very secret message'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>if I redefine this as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>myrealsecret = 'Hey there this is a real secret'
  secret = b+myrealsecret
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Why is that? and how can I get whatever value is in <code>myrealsecret</code> to play nicely with <code>secret</code> as a byte representation?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you.</p>