title: Converting a hex-string representation to actual bytes in Python
body: <p>i need to load the third column of this text file as a hex string</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/1.6/external/skia/emoji/gmojiraw.txt" rel="noreferrer">http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/1.6/external/skia/emoji/gmojiraw.txt</a></p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; open('gmojiraw.txt').read().split('\n')[0].split('\t')[2]
  '\\xF3\\xBE\\x80\\x80'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>how do i open the file so that i can get the third column as hex string:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'\xF3\xBE\x80\x80'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>i also tried binary mode and hex mode, with no success.</p>