Character set woes with binary data

[John Nagle]

Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> In short:  How do I create a string that contains raw binary content 
> without Python caring?  Is that possible?

    Given where we're now at with strings in Python, Python should
really have a "byte" type and a way to deal with arrays of bytes,
independent of the string operators.

    Efficient handling of lists of bytes would do it.

				John Nagle