it *is* a string. because most of the characters are not printable, they're presented using hex notation when you repr() the string. That's what entering an expression in the interactive interpreter does (except that it never prints 'None').
If you really want to write whatever those bytes are, then do something like >>> print x or >>> sys.stdout.write(x) Jeff
pgpmf6usUJ6jW.pgp
Description: PGP signature
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