Ok, I figured it out... The only way to get the flags is as a float, either through an ascii string or a true float. The value of the float, however, is representable as 24 bits of normal binary.
So for example, the value returned is +4.608400E+04 which is really an int, 46084, which is more easily convertible to binary. So the question becomes how to convert an int to binary, which I found here http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/300e220394e2d841/33bc9b0d8174b038?lnk=st&q=python+int+to+binary&rnum=1#33bc9b0d8174b038 So problem solved (just need to implement it). Michael -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
