Python bytes like object to int

I'm currently working on an encryption/decryption program and I need to be able to convert bytes to an integer. I know that:

bytes([3]) = b'\x03'

Yet I cannot find out how to do the inverse. What am I doing terribly wrong?

ggorlen

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asked Nov 30, 2015 at 23:04

4

Assuming you're on at least 3.2, there's a built in for this:

int.from_bytes( bytes, byteorder, *, signed=False )

...

The argument bytes must either be a bytes-like object or an iterable producing bytes.

The byteorder argument determines the byte order used to represent the integer. If byteorder is "big", the most significant byte is at the beginning of the byte array. If byteorder is "little", the most significant byte is at the end of the byte array. To request the native byte order of the host system, use sys.byteorder as the byte order value.

The signed argument indicates whether two’s complement is used to represent the integer.

## Examples:
int.from_bytes(b'\x00\x01', "big")                         # 1
int.from_bytes(b'\x00\x01', "little")                      # 256

int.from_bytes(b'\x00\x10', byteorder='little')            # 4096
int.from_bytes(b'\xfc\x00', byteorder='big', signed=True)  #-1024

martineau

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answered Nov 30, 2015 at 23:08

Peter DeGlopperPeter DeGlopper

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4

Lists of bytes are subscriptable (at least in Python 3.6). This way you can retrieve the decimal value of each byte individually.

>>> intlist = [64, 4, 26, 163, 255]
>>> bytelist = bytes(intlist)       # b'@\x04\x1a\xa3\xff'

>>> for b in bytelist:
...    print(b)                     # 64  4  26  163  255

>>> [b for b in bytelist]           # [64, 4, 26, 163, 255]

>>> bytelist[2]                     # 26 

answered May 7, 2020 at 17:16

0

int.from_bytes( bytes, byteorder, *, signed=False )

doesn't work with me I used function from this website, it works well

https://coderwall.com/p/x6xtxq/convert-bytes-to-int-or-int-to-bytes-in-python

def bytes_to_int(bytes):
    result = 0
    for b in bytes:
        result = result * 256 + int(b)
    return result

def int_to_bytes(value, length):
    result = []
    for i in range(0, length):
        result.append(value >> (i * 8) & 0xff)
    result.reverse()
    return result

answered Nov 9, 2018 at 21:12

1

In case of working with buffered data I found this useful:

int.from_bytes([buf[0],buf[1],buf[2],buf[3]], "big")

Assuming that all elements in buf are 8-bit long.

answered Jun 1, 2021 at 8:23

list() can be used to convert bytes to int (works in Python 3.7):

list(b'\x03\x04\x05')
[3, 4, 5]

answered Apr 22 at 7:58

2

An old question that I stumbled upon while looking for an existing solution. Rolled my own and thought I'd share because it allows you to create a 32-bit integer from a list of bytes, specifying an offset.

def bytes_to_int(bList, offset):
    r = 0
    for i in range(4):
        d = 32 - ((i + 1) * 8)
        r += bList[offset + i] << d
    return r

answered May 19 at 14:12

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