Weird list conversion

[KP]

On Sunday, 13 December 2015 11:57:57 UTC-8, Laura Creighton  wrote:
> In a message of Sun, 13 Dec 2015 11:45:19 -0800, KP writes:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >      f = open("stairs.bin", "rb") 
> >      data = list(f.read(16))
> >      print data
> >
> >returns
> >
> >['=', '\x04', '\x00', '\x05', '\x00', '\x01', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00']
> >
> >The first byte of the file is 0x3D according to my hex editor, so why does Python return '=' and not '\x3D'?
> >
> >As always, thanks for any help!
> 
> 0x3d is the ascii code for '='

I am aware of that - so is the rule that non-printables are returned in hex notation whereas printables come in their ASCII representation?