Attempt to read bb.size bytes from a specified address into the bytes_read array. But bytes_read remains the same before and after (Ghidra Python 3)

Question

address_to_read = bb.getMinAddress()

# Initialize a byte array to store the read bytes

bytes_read = bytearray(bb.size)

print("bytes_read before: ", bytes_read)

currentProgram = getCurrentProgram()

# Attempt to read bytes from the specified address into the byte array

num_bytes_read = currentProgram.getMemory().getBytes(address_to_read, bytes_read)

print("bytes_read after: ", bytes_read)
print("num_bytes_read: ", num_bytes_read)

bytes_read before:

bytearray(b'\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00')

bytes_read after:

bytearray(b'\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00\\x00')
num_bytes_read: 12

I've tried the following to initialize bytes_read:

• bytes_read = array.array('b', bytes_read)

• bytes_read = array.array("b", bytes(bytes_read))

• bytes_read = array.array('b', repr(bytes(bytes_read))[2:-1])

• bytes_read = array.array('b', bytes_read.decode('utf-8'))

• bytes_read = array.array('b', bytes_read.decode())

• bytes_read = list()*bb.size

• num_bytes_read = currentProgram.getMemory().getBytes(address_to_read, bytes_read, 0, bb.size)

None of them populate bytes_read.