Is it normal for python's io.BytesIO.getvalue() to return str instead of bytes?
<p>Is it normal for python's <code>io.BytesIO.getvalue()</code> to return str instead of bytes?</p>

<pre><code> Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Jun 13 2011, 14:28:51) 
 &gt;&gt;&gt; import io
 &gt;&gt;&gt; a = io.BytesIO()
 &gt;&gt;&gt; a
 &lt;_io.BytesIO object at 0x10f9453b0&gt;
 &gt;&gt;&gt; a.getvalue()
 ''
 &gt;&gt;&gt; print type(a.getvalue())
 &lt;type 'str'&gt;
 &gt;&gt;&gt; 
</code></pre>

<p>Should I file a bug?</p>
