With "bytearray", the element type is considered to be "unsigned byte", or so says PEP 3137: "The element data type is always 'B' (i.e. unsigned byte)."
Let's try: Python 2.6.1 (r261:67517, Dec 4 2008, 16:51:00) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 >>> xx = b'x' >>> repr(xx) "'x'" >>> repr(xx[0]) "'x'" >>> repr(xx[0][0]) "'x'" >>> But that's not what "repr" indicates. The bytearray element is apparently being promoted to "bytes" as soon as it comes out of the array. John Nagle -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list