byte string in python2

[Larz60+]

you can iterate through the string, and run  each character through ord():
example:

k = 'kryptonite'
' '.join(format(ord(letter), 'b') for letter in k)

result:

Output:
'1101011 1110010 1111001 1110000 1110100 1101111 1101110 1101001 1110100 1100101'

or for hex:

k = 'kryptonite'
' '.join(format(ord(letter), 'x') for letter in k)

Output:
'6b 72 79 70 74 6f 6e 69 74 65'