From e65bce67ffdb5da836b722b2f57acc7ec15abe00 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Maximilian=20N=C3=B6the?= <maximilian.noethe@tu-dortmund.de>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 12:48:51 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Fix string conversion for h5py >= 3

---
 fact/VERSION | 2 +-
 fact/io.py   | 6 +++---
 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fact/VERSION b/fact/VERSION
index 30f6cf8..894542a 100644
--- a/fact/VERSION
+++ b/fact/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.26.1
+0.26.2
diff --git a/fact/io.py b/fact/io.py
index fadd2e5..e5a35a9 100644
--- a/fact/io.py
+++ b/fact/io.py
@@ -177,9 +177,9 @@ def read_h5py(
             dataset = group[col]
             array = to_native_byteorder(dataset[first:last])
 
-            # pandas cannot handle bytes, convert to str
-            if array.dtype.kind == 'S':
-                array = array.astype(str)
+            # decode unicode strings to str
+            if array.dtype.kind in {'S', 'O'}:
+                array = array.astype('U')
 
             if parse_dates and dataset.attrs.get('timeformat') is not None:
                 array = pd.to_datetime(array, infer_datetime_format=True)