Convert bytes to bits in python

Question

I am working with Python3.2. I need to take a hex stream as an input and parse it at bit-level. So I used

bytes.fromhex(input_str)

to convert the string to actual bytes. Now how do I convert these bytes to bits?

Answer 1

To binary:

bin(byte)[2:].zfill(8)

Answer 2

Here how to do it using format()

print "bin_signedDate : ", ''.join(format(x, '08b') for x in bytevector)

It is important the 08b . That means it will be a maximum of 8 leading zeros be appended to complete a byte. If you don't specify this then the format will just have a variable bit length for each converted byte.

Answer 3

using python format string syntax

>>> mybyte = bytes.fromhex("0F") # create my byte using a hex string
>>> binary_string = "{:08b}".format(int(mybyte.hex(),16))
>>> print(binary_string)
00001111

The second line is where the magic happens. All byte objects have a .hex() function, which returns a hex string. Using this hex string, we convert it to an integer, telling the int() function that it's a base 16 string (because hex is base 16). Then we apply formatting to that integer so it displays as a binary string. The {:08b} is where the real magic happens. It is using the Format Specification Mini-Language format_spec. Specifically it's using the width and the type parts of the format_spec syntax. The 8 sets width to 8, which is how we get the nice 0000 padding, and the b sets the type to binary.

I prefer this method over the bin() method because using a format string gives a lot more flexibility.