#3231: re.compile fails with some bytes patterns
diff --git a/Lib/sre_parse.py b/Lib/sre_parse.py
index 6e70024..ffa8902 100644
--- a/Lib/sre_parse.py
+++ b/Lib/sre_parse.py
@@ -200,7 +200,7 @@
             except IndexError:
                 raise error("bogus escape (end of line)")
             if isinstance(self.string, bytes):
-                char = chr(c)
+                c = chr(c)
             char = char + c
         self.index = self.index + len(char)
         self.next = char