And also, the code which is using getheader of HTTPResponse object would mostly (but incorrectly in py3k) be passing a string as default. The HTTP headers have been a dict with key,values as strings. Counchdb-python - does this make HTTP reqs? I am not sure if having int-values in the header values is proper.

So, David's last e.g seems just fine. Check if it is string and for the code's requirement, make it a list.