Question

I want to convert a MAC address 00163e2fbab7 (stored as a string) to its string representation 00:16:3e:2f:ba:b7.
What is the easiest way to do this?

Answer 1

Use a completely circuitous method to take advantage of an existing function that groups two hex characters at a time:

>>> ':'.join(s.encode('hex') for s in '00163e2fbab7'.decode('hex'))
'00:16:3e:2f:ba:b7'

Updated for Python 3:

>>> ':'.join(format(s, '02x') for s in bytes.fromhex('00163e2fbab7'))
'00:16:3e:2f:ba:b7'