binascii.a2b_binary

[Ed Swarthout]

Why is there no binascii.a2b_binary(bitstr) which returns the binary data 
represented by the bit string?  Like:

>>> binascii.a2b_binary('0011001100110101')
'35'

perl has pack("B*", "0011001100110101");

What is the python way to do this?

Other fun with strings:

>>> '3333'.decode('hex')
'33'
>>> '3333'.encode('hex')
'33333333'

I easily found the doc for str.decode(), but it appears to only mention 
encodings for languages.  It took me a while to connect it to hex_codec.  
Maybe a more direct link could be added.

Thanks,
-EdS