"argument 1 has unexpected type 'str'"

Question

I'm trying to use PyKDE, PyKDE.kdecore.KStandardDirs to be precise. This method is called with two strings according to the documentation and according to the PyQt4 documentation, I can use standard Python strs instead of QString. This doesn't work:

>> KStandardDirs.locate()("socket", "foo")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: KStandardDirs.locate(): not enough arguments
>>> KStandardDirs.locate("socket", "foo")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: KStandardDirs.locate(): argument 1 has unexpected type 'str'

I can't use QString either because it doesn't seem to exist:

>>> from PyQt4.QtCore import QString
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name QString
>>> from PyQt4.QtCore import *
>>> QString
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'QString' is not defined

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I suspect that PyKDE is not yet Python 3 ready, at least as far as that error message is concerned; try passing in a bytestring instead:

KStandardDirs.locate(b"socket", "foo")