Working with bytes.

[Adam T. Gautier]

I have been unable to solve a problem.  I am working with MD5 signatures 
trying to put these in a database.  The MD5 signatures are not generated 
using the python md5 module but an external application that is 
producing the valid 16 byte signature formats.  Anyway, these 16 byte 
signatures are not nescarrally valid strings.  How do I manipulate the 
bytes?  I need to concatenate the bytes with a SQL statement which is a 
string.  This works fine for most of the md5 signatures but some blow up 
with a TypeError.  Because there is a NULL byte or something else.  So I 
guess my ultimate question is how do I get a prepared SQL statement to 
accept a series of bytes?  How do I convert the bytes to a valid string 
like:

'x%L9d\340\316\262\363\037\311\345<\262\357\215'

that can be concatenated?

Thanks