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

[Vishal]

Hi,

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()

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 am i missing here? Can someone please help.

Thanks and best regards,
Vishal