From e181a7fb800d7dff1a1074bc0be25f10e8558034 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Janosh Riebesell <janosh.riebesell@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2022 19:18:06 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] ensure POTCAR data has utf-8 encoding

---
 pymatgen/io/lobster/inputs.py | 2 ++
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

diff --git a/pymatgen/io/lobster/inputs.py b/pymatgen/io/lobster/inputs.py
index dce4e1ec6e3..c247abae9cb 100644
--- a/pymatgen/io/lobster/inputs.py
+++ b/pymatgen/io/lobster/inputs.py
@@ -617,6 +617,8 @@ def _get_potcar_symbols(POTCAR_input: str) -> list:
         # Warning about a bug in lobster-4.1.0
         with zopen(POTCAR_input, "r") as f:
             data = f.read()
+        if isinstance(data, bytes):
+            data = data.decode("utf-8")
         if "SHA256" in data or "COPYR" in data:
             warnings.warn(
                 "These POTCARs are not compatible with "