How to Convert a string into binary

[Duncan Booth]

HNT20 wrote:

> is there a way to convert a string into its binary representation of the 
> ascii table.??
> 
> an example of what i want would be:
> 
> hi  -->  0110100001101001

Why not just write some code to do it? e.g.

>>> def b1(n):
    return "01"[n%2]

>>> def b2(n):
    return b1(n>>1)+b1(n)

>>> def b3(n):
    return b2(n>>2)+b2(n)

>>> def b4(n):
    return b3(n>>4)+b3(n)

>>> bytes = [ b4(n) for n in range(256)]
>>> def binstring(s):
    return ''.join(bytes[ord(c)] for c in s)

>>> binstring('hi')
'0110100001101001'