What is a 'NoneType' object?

Question

I'm getting this error when I run my python script:

TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'NoneType' objects

I'm pretty sure the 'str' means string, but I dont know what a 'NoneType' object is. My script craps out on the second line, I know the first one works because the commands from that line are in my asa as I would expect. At first I thought it may be because I'm using variables and user input inside send_command.

Everything in 'CAPS' are variables, everything in 'lower case' is input from 'parser.add_option' options.

I'm using pexpect, and optparse

send_command(child, SNMPGROUPCMD + group + V3PRIVCMD)
send_command(child, SNMPSRVUSRCMD + snmpuser + group + V3AUTHCMD + snmphmac + snmpauth + PRIVCMD + snmpencrypt + snmppriv)

Answer 1

NoneType is the type for the None object, which is an object that indicates no value. None is the return value of functions that "don't return anything". It is also a common default return value for functions that search for something and may or may not find it; for example, it's returned by re.search when the regex doesn't match, or dict.get when the key has no entry in the dict. You cannot add None to strings or other objects.

One of your variables is None, not a string. Maybe you forgot to return in one of your functions, or maybe the user didn't provide a command-line option and optparse gave you None for that option's value. When you try to add None to a string, you get that exception:

send_command(child, SNMPGROUPCMD + group + V3PRIVCMD)

One of group or SNMPGROUPCMD or V3PRIVCMD has None as its value.

Answer 2

It means you're trying to concatenate a string with something that is None.

None is the "null" of Python, and NoneType is its type.

This code will raise the same kind of error:

>>> bar = "something"
>>> foo = None
>>> print foo + bar
TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'NoneType' objects

Answer 3

In Python, to represent the absence of a value, you can use the None value types.NoneType.None