Simple newb string question

[Involute]

In the following code I open two files (one to read from and the other to write to). I want to read through f until I get to a left brace ("{") before I start writing out to g. The left brace is there, but the code never executes the first break. The output of print(x) looks like this on the console:

b'='
b' '
b'{'
b'\r'
b'\n'
b'\t'
b'0'

You can see the brace in the third line. I've tried a number of formats for the right side of the == in the if str(x) == '{': line, but I still can't get it to break. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

with open("E:\\Karl\\Documents\\Sculpture\\Prime Time\\Digits\\1d_inv_conv.c", 'w') as g:
    with open("E:\\Karl\\Documents\\Sculpture\\Prime Time\\Digits\\1d_inv.c", 'rb') as f:
        while True:
            x = f.read(1)
            print(x)
            if str(x) == '{':
                break
        j = 1
        while (j == 1):
                for i in range(5):
                    x = f.read(1)
                    if x == '':
                        j = 0
                        break
#                    print(x)
                    g.write(str(x))
                    g.write(", ")
                g.write("\n")

[ichabod801]

The string of a bytestring is still a bytestring and is not equal to the string with the same characters. Instead of testing str(x) == '{', try testing x == b'{'.

[Involute]

Thanks! That did it.