[Docutils-develop] [docutils:bugs] #514 publish_file no longer works / crashes

Thank you for the report.
The issue is fixed in [r10267].


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**[bugs:#514] publish_file no longer works / crashes**

**Status:** open
**Created:** Sat Nov 15, 2025 05:26 PM UTC by Kristian Lehto
**Last Updated:** Sun Nov 16, 2025 04:58 AM UTC
**Owner:** nobody


Hello,

We are using code bellow to convert rst files to html.

Code works fine if we use old docutils version 0.20.1.

python -m pip install docutils==0.20.1

But current 0.22.3 version crashes.

import io
from docutils.core import publish_file

text = open('test.rst', 'rb').read()
source = io.BytesIO(text)
destination = open('test.html', 'w')
publish_file(source=source, destination=destination, writer_name='html')
destination.close()
source.close()

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\projects\test\test.py", line 7, in <module>
    publish_file(source=source, destination=destination, writer_name='html')
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\core.py", line 465, in publish_file
    output, _publisher = publish_programmatically(
                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
        source_class=io.FileInput, source=source, source_path=source_path,
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    ...<7 lines>...
        config_section=config_section,
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        enable_exit_status=enable_exit_status)
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\core.py", line 794, in publish_programmatically
    output = publisher.publish(enable_exit_status=enable_exit_status)
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\core.py", line 269, in publish
    self.document = self.reader.read(self.source, self.parser,
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                     self.settings)
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\readers\__init__.py", line 95, in read
    self.parse()
    ~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\readers\__init__.py", line 101, in parse
    self.parser.parse(self.input, document)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\parsers\rst\__init__.py", line 175, in parse
    inputlines = docutils.statemachine.string2lines(
          inputstring, tab_width=document.settings.tab_width,
          convert_whitespace=True)
  File "C:\Python314\Lib\site-packages\docutils\statemachine.py", line 1515, in string2lines
    astring = whitespace.sub(' ', astring)
TypeError: cannot use a string pattern on a bytes-like object


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