Python: handling a large string value - if statement not working properly?

Question

I have this large string value, about 500 characters called 'strPage6' I'm looking to see if nth position of this string has the '%' value with an if statement without success.

#see if 330th character has value '%'
if (strPage6[330:331]=="%"):
   print("330th character is '%' ")
   print(strPage6)
else:
   print("330th character is NOT '%' ")
   print(strPage6)

my terminal returns the following value:

330th character is NOT '%'
b'%'

I tried switching the byte string into a plain string with 'decode' with the following result:

strPage6=strPage.decode('utf-8')
[...]

330th character is NOT '%'
e

Basically, I am looking to get the following result:

330th character is '%'
%

Your help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Did you try strPage6[330]==b"%"? – khelwood

does the equation properly