how to turn arbitrary binary string into unix filename?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Bill Janssen <janssen at parc.xerox.com> wrote:
> But after half an hour of poking around, I can't see a
> standard method that one can call to hexify a string.

well, you could have written one from scratch in much
less than 30 minutes, right? ;-)

here's some sample code from the eff-bot guide:

# md5-example-2.py

import md5
import string
import base64

hash = md5.new()
hash.update("spam, spam, and eggs")

value = hash.digest()

print string.join(map(lambda v: "%02x" % ord(v), value), "")
print base64.encodestring(value)

...

running this prints:

4c054aa3b6eda37560c57283b71046c3
TAVKo7bto3VgxXKDtxBGww==

...

alternatively use "sha" instead of "md5"; sha instances
have a hexdigest method that does exactly what you
want.  gives you a stronger digest, and even longer file
names!

</F>

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