binascii.unhexlify ... not clear about usage, and output

[Vishal]

On May 30, 1:31 pm, Peter Otten <__pete... at web.de> wrote:
> Vishal wrote:
> > I have a file with a long list of hex characters, and I want to get a
> > file with corresponding binary characters
>
> > here's what I did:
>
> >>>> import binascii
> >>>> f1 = 'c:\\temp\\allhex.txt'
> >>>> f2 = 'c:\\temp\\allbin.txt'
> >>>> sf = open(f1, 'rU')
> >>>> df = open(f2, 'w')
> >>>> slines = sf.readlines()
> >>>> for line in slines:
> > ...   x = line.rstrip('\n')
> > ...   y = binascii.unhexlify(x)
> > ...   df.write(y)
> > ...
> >>>> df.close()
> >>>> sf.close()
>
> Your code is OK, but you have to open f2 in binary mode if your data is
> truly binary (an image, say).
>
> > But what I get is all garbage, atleast textpad and notepad show that
> > I tried doing it for only one string, and this is what I am seeing on
> > the interpreter:
>
> >>>> x
> > '0164'
> >>>> y
> > '\x01d'
>
> > I was expecting 'y' would come out as a string with binary
> > characters!!!
>
> What are "binary characters"?
>
> > What am i missing here? Can someone please help.
>
> What /exactly/ did you expect? Note that "\x01d" and "\x01\x64" are just
> different renderings of the same string chr(0x01) + chr(0x64).
>
> Peter

Thanks Peter for the explanation. Actually what I want is:

if Input is 0x0164, Output should be: 0000000101100100
where each nibble is separated and the output appears in terms of '0's
and '1's.

Can I do that with this function binascii.unhexlify()???

Thanks and best regards,
Vishal