This function fails to decipher a listing of binary digits using the ASCII tables.

processMysterBits.py

import re

text = "101011011101010001101101011011101010100010101101010001101100101011011101010001110100111011010101101110110110101110110101000011010101101110110100111011010101101011010100110101001000100100011010100101011100110101001000101011010100110101001010100111010101101001001010101110100101010001010101101001001010100111010101101010101010110001010001110100101011010101010010010100011101000110101010110001010000101001001101010011101011011101010100101011010100111010110100101001001101010011010101000101001010110111010100011111010110110010101101110111010101000101001010111101101010001101001110110101011101101101101011010011101101011101101010001101000101001010111010110101001101010001101001000110101101010011010101001010111010110101001010100010101001110101011010100010101010101010011101011101001010100010101010101110100101101010101100010100010101001010011010101011010110101110100101101010101011"

def bin2ascii(binary_form):
    """Converts binary strings of length 8 to ASCII"""
    if len(binary_form) != 8:
        return "?"
    return chr(int(binary_form,2))

def group(message, window, shift=-1, skipspaces=True):
    """Groups a string message into a list of shorter string messages of length 'window'. By default, the function shifts by size 'window', but that can be set to any value. Also, whitespace characters are skipped."""
    if shift == -1:
        shift = window

    if skipspaces:
        message = re.sub("\s+", "", message)

    tokens = []
    i = 0
    while i + window <= len(message):
        tokens += [ message[i:i+window] ]
        i += shift
    return tokens

def processString(text, removeLead=0):
    """First, this function trims the first 'removeLead' characters. Then it groups a string text into clumps of 8 bytes and passes each clump to the binary-to-ascii converter, then prints the message"""
    text = text[removeLead:]
    eightbits = group(text, 8)
    for clump in eightbits:
        print bin2ascii(clump),

if __name__ == '__main__':

    # Check the list going forward
    for removeLead in range(8):
        print removeLead
        processString(text, removeLead)
        print
        print

    # Check the list going backward
    reverse = text[::-1]
    for removeLead in range(8):
        print removeLead
        processString(reverse, removeLead)
        print
        print