Error remove over-representative sequences : TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found

Question

[metallicasster]

Hi I am running this python script to remove over-representative sequences from my fastq files, but I keep getting the error. I am new to bioinfomatics and have been following a fixed set of pipeline for sequence assembly. I wanted to remove over-representative sequences with this script.

Here is the command :

python /home/TranscriptomeAssemblyTools/RemoveFastqcOverrepSequenceReads.py -1 R1_1.fq -2 R1_2.fq

Here is the error :

File "TranscriptomeAssemblyTools/RemoveFastqcOverrepSequenceReads.py", line 46, in leftseqs=ParseFastqcLog(opts.l_fastqc) File "TranscriptomeAssemblyTools/RemoveFastqcOverrepSequenceReads.py", line 33, in ParseFastqcLog with open(fastqclog) as fp: TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found

**Here is the python script :**
            import sys
            import gzip
            from os.path import basename
            import argparse
            import re
            from itertools import izip,izip_longest

            def seqsmatch(overreplist,read):
                flag=False
                if overreplist!=[]:
                    for seq in overreplist:
                        if seq in read:
                            flag=True
                            break
                return flag

            def get_input_streams(r1file,r2file):
                if  r1file[-2:]=='gz':
                    r1handle=gzip.open(r1file,'rb')
                    r2handle=gzip.open(r2file,'rb')
                else:
                    r1handle=open(r1file,'r')
                    r2handle=open(r2file,'r')

                return r1handle,r2handle

            def FastqIterate(iterable,fillvalue=None):
                "Grab one 4-line fastq read at a time"
                args = [iter(iterable)] * 4
                return izip_longest(fillvalue=fillvalue, *args) 

            def ParseFastqcLog(fastqclog):    
                with open(fastqclog) as fp:
                    for result in re.findall('Overrepresented sequences(.*?)END_MODULE', fp.read(), re.S):
                        seqs=([i.split('\t')[0] for i in result.split('\n')[2:-1]])
                return seqs     

            if __name__=="__main__": 
                parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="options for removing reads with over-represented sequences")
                parser.add_argument('-1','--left_reads',dest='leftreads',type=str,help='R1 fastq file')
                parser.add_argument('-2','--right_reads',dest='rightreads',type=str,help='R2 fastq file')
                parser.add_argument('-fql','--fastqc_left',dest='l_fastqc',type=str,help='fastqc text file for R1')
                parser.add_argument('-fqr','--fastqc_right',dest='r_fastqc',type=str,help='fastqc text file for R2')
                opts = parser.parse_args()

                leftseqs=ParseFastqcLog(opts.l_fastqc)
                rightseqs=ParseFastqcLog(opts.r_fastqc)

                r1_out=open('rmoverrep_'+basename(opts.leftreads).replace('.gz',''),'w')
                r2_out=open('rmoverrep_'+basename(opts.rightreads).replace('.gz',''),'w')

                r1_stream,r2_stream=get_input_streams(opts.leftreads,opts.rightreads)

                counter=0
                failcounter=0

                with r1_stream as f1, r2_stream as f2:
                    R1=FastqIterate(f1)
                    R2=FastqIterate(f2)
                    for entry in R1:
                        counter+=1
                        if counter%100000==0:
                            print "%s reads processed" % counter

                        head1,seq1,placeholder1,qual1=[i.strip() for i in entry]
                        head2,seq2,placeholder2,qual2=[j.strip() for j in R2.next()]

                        flagleft,flagright=seqsmatch(leftseqs,seq1),seqsmatch(rightseqs,seq2)

                        if True not in (flagleft,flagright):
                            r1_out.write('%s\n' % '\n'.join([head1,seq1,'+',qual1]))
                            r2_out.write('%s\n' % '\n'.join([head2,seq2,'+',qual2]))
                        else:
                            failcounter+=1


                    print 'total # of reads evaluated = %s' % counter
                    print 'number of reads retained = %s' % (counter-failcounter)
                    print 'number of PE reads filtered = %s' % failcounter


            r1_out.close()
            r2_out.close()