diff --git a/python/obitools3/commands/grep.pyx b/python/obitools3/commands/grep.pyx
index 4039e28..09ce295 100644
--- a/python/obitools3/commands/grep.pyx
+++ b/python/obitools3/commands/grep.pyx
@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ def Filter_generator(options, tax_filter, i_view):
     invert_selection = options["invert_selection"]
     id_set = None
     if "id_list" in options:
-        id_set = set(x.strip() for x in open(options["id_list"]))
+        id_set = set(x.strip() for x in open(options["id_list"], 'rb'))
 
     # Initialize the regular expression patterns
     seq_pattern = None
diff --git a/python/obitools3/version.py b/python/obitools3/version.py
index 1c39206..0963dda 100755
--- a/python/obitools3/version.py
+++ b/python/obitools3/version.py
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 major = 3
 minor = 0
-serial= '0b37'
+serial= '0b38'
 
 version ="%d.%d.%s" % (major,minor,serial)