title: Using XLRD in Ironpython
body: <p>I am trying to use the XLRD library in IronPython 2.7</p>
  
  <p>At the most basic operation of opening an .xls file (2003 format) I get the following error, and I am not sure how to fix it:</p>
  
  <pre><code>  workbook = xlrd.open_workbook(xlsfile)
  
    File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line    426, in open_workbook
    TypeError: sequence item 0: expected bytes or byte array, str found
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>any ideas? i would like to use xlrd if possible but seems like there may be some compatibility problems. When using Python 2.7 interpreter the file opens no problem ..</p>