How do I create a numpy array from string?

Question

I have a file reader that reads n bytes from a file and returns a string of chars representing that (binary) data. I want to read up n bytes into a numpy array

Answer 1

>>> '\x01\x05\x03\xff'
'\x01\x05\x03\xff'
>>> map(ord, '\x01\x05\x03\xff')
[1, 5, 3, 255]
>>> numpy.array(map(ord, '\x01\x05\x03\xff'))
array([  1,   5,   3, 255])