title: BeautifulSoup: Can't convert NavigableString to string
body: <p>I'm starting to learn Python and I've decided to code a simple scraper. One problem I'm encountering is I cannot convert a NavigableString to a regular string. </p>
  
  <p>Using BeautifulSoup4 and Python 3.5.1. Should I just bite the bullet and go to an earlier version of Python and BeautifulSoup? Or is there a way 
  I can code my own function to cast a NavigableString to a regular unicode string?</p>
  
  <pre><code>for tag in soup.find_all("span"):
      for child in tag.children:
          if "name" in tag.string: #triggers error, can't compare string to NavigableString/bytes
              return child
  
      #things i've tried:
      #if "name" in str(tag.string)
      #if "name" in unicode(tag.string) #not in 3.5?
      #if "name" in strring(tag.string, "utf-8")
      #tried regex, didn't work. Again, doesn't like NavigableSTring type. 
      #... bunch of other stuff too!
  </code></pre>