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Simulating a C cast in Python [duplicate]

Let's say I have this number i = -6884376.
How do I refer to it as to an unsigned variable?
Something like (unsigned long)i in C.

Assuming:
You have 2's-complement representations in mind; and,
By (unsigned long) you mean unsigned 32-bit integer,
then you just need to add 2**32 (or 1 << 32) to the negative value.
For example, apply this to -1:
>>> -1
-1
>>> _ + 2**32
4294967295L
>>> bin(_)
'0b11111111111111111111111111111111'
Assumption #1 means you want -1 to be viewed as a solid string of 1 bits, and assumption #2 means you want 32 of them.
Nobody but you can say what your hidden assumptions are, though. If, for example, you have 1's-complement representations in mind, then you need to apply the ~ prefix operator instead. Python integers work hard to give the illusion of using an infinitely wide 2's complement representation (like regular 2's complement, but with an infinite number of "sign bits").
And to duplicate what the platform C compiler does, you can use the ctypes module:
>>> import ctypes
>>> ctypes.c_ulong(-1) # stuff Python's -1 into a C unsigned long
c_ulong(4294967295L)
>>> _.value
4294967295L
C's unsigned long happens to be 4 bytes on the box that ran this sample.

To get the value equivalent to your C cast, just bitwise and with the appropriate mask. e.g. if unsigned long is 32 bit:
>>> i = -6884376
>>> i & 0xffffffff
4288082920
or if it is 64 bit:
>>> i & 0xffffffffffffffff
18446744073702667240
Do be aware though that although that gives you the value you would have in C, it is still a signed value, so any subsequent calculations may give a negative result and you'll have to continue to apply the mask to simulate a 32 or 64 bit calculation.
This works because although Python looks like it stores all numbers as sign and magnitude, the bitwise operations are defined as working on two's complement values. C stores integers in twos complement but with a fixed number of bits. Python bitwise operators act on twos complement values but as though they had an infinite number of bits: for positive numbers they extend leftwards to infinity with zeros, but negative numbers extend left with ones. The & operator will change that leftward string of ones into zeros and leave you with just the bits that would have fit into the C value.
Displaying the values in hex may make this clearer (and I rewrote to string of f's as an expression to show we are interested in either 32 or 64 bits):
>>> hex(i)
'-0x690c18'
>>> hex (i & ((1 << 32) - 1))
'0xff96f3e8'
>>> hex (i & ((1 << 64) - 1)
'0xffffffffff96f3e8L'
For a 32 bit value in C, positive numbers go up to 2147483647 (0x7fffffff), and negative numbers have the top bit set going from -1 (0xffffffff) down to -2147483648 (0x80000000). For values that fit entirely in the mask, we can reverse the process in Python by using a smaller mask to remove the sign bit and then subtracting the sign bit:
>>> u = i & ((1 << 32) - 1)
>>> (u & ((1 << 31) - 1)) - (u & (1 << 31))
-6884376
Or for the 64 bit version:
>>> u = 18446744073702667240
>>> (u & ((1 << 63) - 1)) - (u & (1 << 63))
-6884376
This inverse process will leave the value unchanged if the sign bit is 0, but obviously it isn't a true inverse because if you started with a value that wouldn't fit within the mask size then those bits are gone.

Python doesn't have builtin unsigned types. You can use mathematical operations to compute a new int representing the value you would get in C, but there is no "unsigned value" of a Python int. The Python int is an abstraction of an integer value, not a direct access to a fixed-byte-size integer.

Since version 3.2 :
def unsignedToSigned(n, byte_count):
return int.from_bytes(n.to_bytes(byte_count, 'little', signed=False), 'little', signed=True)
def signedToUnsigned(n, byte_count):
return int.from_bytes(n.to_bytes(byte_count, 'little', signed=True), 'little', signed=False)
output :
In [3]: unsignedToSigned(5, 1)
Out[3]: 5
In [4]: signedToUnsigned(5, 1)
Out[4]: 5
In [5]: unsignedToSigned(0xFF, 1)
Out[5]: -1
In [6]: signedToUnsigned(0xFF, 1)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
OverflowError Traceback (most recent call last)
Input In [6], in <cell line: 1>()
----> 1 signedToUnsigned(0xFF, 1)
Input In [1], in signedToUnsigned(n, byte_count)
4 def signedToUnsigned(n, byte_count):
----> 5 return int.from_bytes(n.to_bytes(byte_count, 'little', signed=True), 'little', signed=False)
OverflowError: int too big to convert
In [7]: signedToUnsigned(-1, 1)
Out[7]: 255
Explanations : to/from_bytes convert to/from bytes, in 2's complement considering the number as one of size byte_count * 8 bits. In C/C++, chances are you should pass 4 or 8 as byte_count for respectively a 32 or 64 bit number (the int type).
I first pack the input number in the format it is supposed to be from (using the signed argument to control signed/unsigned), then unpack to the format we would like it to have been from. And you get the result.
Note the Exception when trying to use fewer bytes than required to represent the number (In [6]). 0xFF is 255 which can't be represented using a C's char type (-128 ≤ n ≤ 127). This is preferable to any other behavior.

You could use the struct Python built-in library:
Encode:
import struct
i = -6884376
print('{0:b}'.format(i))
packed = struct.pack('>l', i) # Packing a long number.
unpacked = struct.unpack('>L', packed)[0] # Unpacking a packed long number to unsigned long
print(unpacked)
print('{0:b}'.format(unpacked))
Out:
-11010010000110000011000
4288082920
11111111100101101111001111101000
Decode:
dec_pack = struct.pack('>L', unpacked) # Packing an unsigned long number.
dec_unpack = struct.unpack('>l', dec_pack)[0] # Unpacking a packed unsigned long number to long (revert action).
print(dec_unpack)
Out:
-6884376
[NOTE]:
> is BigEndian operation.
l is long.
L is unsigned long.
In amd64 architecture int and long are 32bit, So you could use i and I instead of l and L respectively.
[UPDATE]
According to the #hl037_ comment, this approach works on int32 not int64 or int128 as I used long operation into struct.pack(). Nevertheless, in the case of int64, the written code would be changed simply using long long operand (q) in struct as follows:
Encode:
i = 9223372036854775807 # the largest int64 number
packed = struct.pack('>q', i) # Packing an int64 number
unpacked = struct.unpack('>Q', packed)[0] # Unpacking signed to unsigned
print(unpacked)
print('{0:b}'.format(unpacked))
Out:
9223372036854775807
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Next, follow the same way for the decoding stage. As well as this, keep in mind q is long long integer — 8byte and Q is unsigned long long
But in the case of int128, the situation is slightly different as there is no 16-byte operand for struct.pack(). Therefore, you should split your number into two int64.
Here's how it should be:
i = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000 # an int128 number
print(len('{0:b}'.format(i)))
max_int64 = 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
packed = struct.pack('>qq', (i >> 64) & max_int64, i & max_int64)
a, b = struct.unpack('>QQ', packed)
unpacked = (a << 64) | b
print(unpacked)
print('{0:b}'.format(unpacked))
Out:
123
10000000000000000000000000000000000000
111100001011110111000010000110101011101101001000110110110010000000011110100001101101010000000000000000000000000000000000000

just use abs for converting unsigned to signed in python
a=-12
b=abs(a)
print(b)
Output:
12

How to make python look hex numbers as two's complemented?

I have an array of hex positive and negetive numbers. I want to transform them to decimal value:
>>> int("f107",16)
61703
>>>
how can I make python to look f107 as a two's complemented number? In the other word I want -3833 instead of 61703. How can I achieve it?

It's a very simple function:
def twos_complement(n, w):
if n & (1 << (w - 1)): n = n - (1 << w)
return n
Example:
>>> twos_complement(61703, 16)
-3833
Unlike Joran's answer this supports arbitrary bit-width.

struct.unpack(">h","f107".decode("hex"))
0xf107 = encode_to_bytes => "\xf1\x07"
since its two bytes we simply unpack it as > big-endian h signed-short

Most Significant Byte Calculation

I am trying to implement a larger cipher problem, and I am running into an issue I don't quite understand when taking the Most Significant Byte (not bit).
To turn an int into a byte I am using:
def binary(i):
if i == 0:
return "0"
s = ''
while i:
if i & 1 == 1:
s = "1" + s
else:
s = "0" + s
i >>= 1
return s
I am pretty sure the above is correct, it works with my test numbers. To then extract the Most Significant Byte I am using:
def msb(i):
a = binary(i)
b = a[0:7]
c = int(b,2)
return c
However, this seems to return a number half what I would expect. Am I wrong in thinking you can get the most significant byte by just taking the first 8 bits, or am I missing something else silly?

Your example code only gets the seven leading bits, not 8:
def msb(i):
a = binary(i)
b = a[0:7] # gets first SEVEN characters of string a
c = int(b,2)
return c
Change it to a[0:8] to extract 8 leading characters/bits rather than 7.

There are much easier ways to do this. For example, if you want the top eight bits (ignoring byte alignment), you can do:
def msb(val):
return val >> (val.bit_length() - 8)
For the most significant aligned byte, in Python 3 you can do:
def msb(val):
return val.to_bytes((val.bit_length() + 7) // 8, 'big')[0]
In Py2, you'd have to convert to a hex string and back to match the to_bytes approach.

a byte is 0xFF you can get the most signifigant byte(leftmost) by doing
i & (0xFF<<(n_bytes(i)-1))
I always get most significant and least significant confused if you want the rightmost byte its easier even
i & 0xFF
i think thats right at least ... im not sure if it will be guaranteed to return the number of bytes or not ...
based on your example i think the second code is what you want
you could also do something like
s = struct.pack("i",i)
ord(s[0]) # leftmost
ord(s[-1]) # rightmost

If you want aligned bytes, this should work at least from Python 2.5 onwards:
def msb(val):
return 0 if val == 0 else val >> (((val.bit_length() - 1) >> 3) << 3)
Or, if you prefer it more readable:
def msb(val)
if val == 0:
return 0
else:
return val >> (((val.bit_length() - 1) / 8) * 8)

Python: How to convert a string of zeros and ones to binary [duplicate]

I'd simply like to convert a base-2 binary number string into an int, something like this:
>>> '11111111'.fromBinaryToInt()
255
Is there a way to do this in Python?

You use the built-in int() function, and pass it the base of the input number, i.e. 2 for a binary number:
>>> int('11111111', 2)
255
Here is documentation for Python 2, and for Python 3.

Just type 0b11111111 in python interactive interface:
>>> 0b11111111
255

Another way to do this is by using the bitstring module:
>>> from bitstring import BitArray
>>> b = BitArray(bin='11111111')
>>> b.uint
255
Note that the unsigned integer (uint) is different from the signed integer (int):
>>> b.int
-1
Your question is really asking for the unsigned integer representation; this is an important distinction.
The bitstring module isn't a requirement, but it has lots of performant methods for turning input into and from bits into other forms, as well as manipulating them.

Using int with base is the right way to go. I used to do this before I found int takes base also. It is basically a reduce applied on a list comprehension of the primitive way of converting binary to decimal ( e.g. 110 = 2**0 * 0 + 2 ** 1 * 1 + 2 ** 2 * 1)
add = lambda x,y : x + y
reduce(add, [int(x) * 2 ** y for x, y in zip(list(binstr), range(len(binstr) - 1, -1, -1))])

If you wanna know what is happening behind the scene, then here you go.
class Binary():
def __init__(self, binNumber):
self._binNumber = binNumber
self._binNumber = self._binNumber[::-1]
self._binNumber = list(self._binNumber)
self._x = [1]
self._count = 1
self._change = 2
self._amount = 0
print(self._ToNumber(self._binNumber))
def _ToNumber(self, number):
self._number = number
for i in range (1, len (self._number)):
self._total = self._count * self._change
self._count = self._total
self._x.append(self._count)
self._deep = zip(self._number, self._x)
for self._k, self._v in self._deep:
if self._k == '1':
self._amount += self._v
return self._amount
mo = Binary('101111110')

Here's another concise way to do it not mentioned in any of the above answers:
>>> eval('0b' + '11111111')
255
Admittedly, it's probably not very fast, and it's a very very bad idea if the string is coming from something you don't have control over that could be malicious (such as user input), but for completeness' sake, it does work.

A recursive Python implementation:
def int2bin(n):
return int2bin(n >> 1) + [n & 1] if n > 1 else [1]

If you are using python3.6 or later you can use f-string to do the
conversion:
Binary to decimal:
>>> print(f'{0b1011010:#0}')
90
>>> bin_2_decimal = int(f'{0b1011010:#0}')
>>> bin_2_decimal
90
binary to octal hexa and etc.
>>> f'{0b1011010:#o}'
'0o132' # octal
>>> f'{0b1011010:#x}'
'0x5a' # hexadecimal
>>> f'{0b1011010:#0}'
'90' # decimal
Pay attention to 2 piece of information separated by colon.
In this way, you can convert between {binary, octal, hexadecimal, decimal} to {binary, octal, hexadecimal, decimal} by changing right side of colon[:]
:#b -> converts to binary
:#o -> converts to octal
:#x -> converts to hexadecimal
:#0 -> converts to decimal as above example
Try changing left side of colon to have octal/hexadecimal/decimal.

For large matrix (10**5 rows and up) it is better to use a vectorized matmult. Pass in all rows and cols in one shot. It is extremely fast. There is no looping in python here. I originally designed it for converting many binary columns like 0/1 for like 10 different genre columns in MovieLens into a single integer for each example row.
def BitsToIntAFast(bits):
m,n = bits.shape
a = 2**np.arange(n)[::-1] # -1 reverses array of powers of 2 of same length as bits
return bits # a

For the record to go back and forth in basic python3:
a = 10
bin(a)
# '0b1010'
int(bin(a), 2)
# 10
eval(bin(a))
# 10

How to get the signed integer value of a long in python?

If lv stores a long value, and the machine is 32 bits, the following code:
iv = int(lv & 0xffffffff)
results an iv of type long, instead of the machine's int.
How can I get the (signed) int value in this case?

import ctypes
number = lv & 0xFFFFFFFF
signed_number = ctypes.c_long(number).value

You're working in a high-level scripting language; by nature, the native data types of the system you're running on aren't visible. You can't cast to a native signed int with code like this.
If you know that you want the value converted to a 32-bit signed integer--regardless of the platform--you can just do the conversion with the simple math:
iv = 0xDEADBEEF
if(iv & 0x80000000):
iv = -0x100000000 + iv

Essentially, the problem is to sign extend from 32 bits to... an infinite number of bits, because Python has arbitrarily large integers. Normally, sign extension is done automatically by CPU instructions when casting, so it's interesting that this is harder in Python than it would be in, say, C.
By playing around, I found something similar to BreizhGatch's function, but that doesn't require a conditional statement. n & 0x80000000 extracts the 32-bit sign bit; then, the - keeps the same 32-bit representation but sign-extends it; finally, the extended sign bits are set on n.
def toSigned32(n):
n = n & 0xffffffff
return n | (-(n & 0x80000000))
Bit Twiddling Hacks suggests another solution that perhaps works more generally. n ^ 0x80000000 flips the 32-bit sign bit; then - 0x80000000 will sign-extend the opposite bit. Another way to think about it is that initially, negative numbers are above positive numbers (separated by 0x80000000); the ^ swaps their positions; then the - shifts negative numbers to below 0.
def toSigned32(n):
n = n & 0xffffffff
return (n ^ 0x80000000) - 0x80000000

Can I suggest this:
def getSignedNumber(number, bitLength):
mask = (2 ** bitLength) - 1
if number & (1 << (bitLength - 1)):
return number | ~mask
else:
return number & mask
print iv, '->', getSignedNumber(iv, 32)

You may use struct library to convert values like that. It's ugly, but works:
from struct import pack, unpack
signed = unpack('l', pack('L', lv & 0xffffffff))[0]

A quick and dirty solution (x is never greater than 32-bit in my case).
if x > 0x7fffffff:
x = x - 4294967296

If you know how many bits are in the original value, e.g. byte or multibyte values from an I2C sensor, then you can do the standard Two's Complement conversion:
def TwosComp8(n):
return n - 0x100 if n & 0x80 else n
def TwosComp16(n):
return n - 0x10000 if n & 0x8000 else n
def TwosComp32(n):
return n - 0x100000000 if n & 0x80000000 else n

In case the hexadecimal representation of the number is of 4 bytes, this would solve the problem.
def B2T_32(x):
num=int(x,16)
if(num & 0x80000000): # If it has the negative sign bit. (MSB=1)
num -= 0x80000000*2
return num
print(B2T_32(input("enter a input as a hex value\n")))

Simplest solution with any bit-length of number
Why is the syntax of a signed integer so difficult for the human mind to understand. Because this is the idea of machines. :-)
Let's explain.
If we have a bi-directional 7-bit counter with the initial state
000 0000
and we get a pulse for the back count input. Then the next number to count will be
111 1111
And the people said:
Hey, the counter we need to know that this is a negative reload. You
should add a sign letting you know about this.
And the counter added:
1111 1111
And people asked,
How are we going to calculate that this is -1.
The counter replied: Find a number one greater than the reading and subtract it and you get the result.
1111 1111
-10000 0000
____________
(dec) -1
def sigIntFromHex(a): # a = 0x0xffe1
if a & (1 << (a.bit_length()-1)): # check if highest bit is 1 thru & with 0x1000
return a - (1 << (a.bit_length())) # 0xffe1 - 0x10000
else:
return a
###and more elegant:###
def sigIntFromHex(a):
return a - (1 << (a.bit_length())) if a & (1 << (a.bit_length()-1)) else a
b = 0xFFE1
print(sigIntFromHex(b))
I hope I helped