How to convert an integer in any base to a string?

Question

Python allows easy creation of an integer from a string of a given base via

int(str, base). 

I want to perform the inverse: creation of a string from an integer, i.e. I want some function int2base(num, base), such that:

int(int2base(x, b), b) == x

The function name/argument order is unimportant.

For any number x and base b that int() will accept.

This is an easy function to write: in fact it's easier than describing it in this question. However, I feel like I must be missing something.

I know about the functions bin, oct, hex, but I cannot use them for a few reasons:

• Those functions are not available on older versions of Python, with which I need compatibility with (2.2)

• I want a general solution that can be called the same way for different bases

• I want to allow bases other than 2, 8, 16

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Answer 1

>>> import string
>>> def int2base(integer, base):
        if not integer: return '0'
        sign = 1 if integer > 0 else -1
        alphanum = string.digits + string.ascii_lowercase
        nums = alphanum[:base]
        res = ''
        integer *= sign
        while integer:
                integer, mod = divmod(integer, base)
                res += nums[mod]
        return ('' if sign == 1 else '-') + res[::-1]


>>> int2base(-15645, 23)
'-16d5'
>>> int2base(213, 21)
'a3'

Answer 2

Recursive

I would simplify the most voted answer to:

BS="0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
def to_base(n, b): 
    "0" if not n else to_base(n//b, b).lstrip("0") + BS[n%b]

With the same advice for RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded in cmp on very large integers and negative numbers. (You could usesys.setrecursionlimit(new_limit))

Iterative

To avoid recursion problems:

BS="0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
def to_base(s, b):
    res = ""
    while s:
        res+=BS[s%b]
        s//= b
    return res[::-1] or "0"

Answer 3

Python doesn't have a built-in function for printing an integer in an arbitrary base. You'll have to write your own if you want to.

Answer 4

Surprisingly, people were giving only solutions that convert to small bases (smaller then the length of the English alphabet). There was no attempt to give a solution which converts to any arbitrary base from 2 to infinity.

So here is a super simple solution:

def numberToBase(n, b):
    if n == 0:
        return [0]
    digits = []
    while n:
        digits.append(int(n % b))
        n //= b
    return digits[::-1]

so if you need to convert some super huge number to the base 577,

numberToBase(67854 ** 15 - 102, 577), will give you a correct solution: [4, 473, 131, 96, 431, 285, 524, 486, 28, 23, 16, 82, 292, 538, 149, 25, 41, 483, 100, 517, 131, 28, 0, 435, 197, 264, 455],

Which you can later convert to any base you want

Answer 5

def dec_to_radix(input, to_radix=2, power=None):
    if not isinstance(input, int):
        raise TypeError('Not an integer!')
    elif power is None:
        power = 1

    if input == 0:
        return 0
    else:
        remainder = input % to_radix**power
        digit = str(int(remainder/to_radix**(power-1)))
        return int(str(dec_to_radix(input-remainder, to_radix, power+1)) + digit)

def radix_to_dec(input, from_radix):
    if not isinstance(input, int):
        raise TypeError('Not an integer!')
    return sum(int(digit)*(from_radix**power) for power, digit in enumerate(str(input)[::-1]))

def radix_to_radix(input, from_radix=10, to_radix=2, power=None):
    dec = radix_to_dec(input, from_radix)
    return dec_to_radix(dec, to_radix, power)

Answer 6

Great answers! I guess the answer to my question was "no" I was not missing some obvious solution. Here is the function I will use that condenses the good ideas expressed in the answers.

• allow caller-supplied mapping of characters (allows base64 encode)
• checks for negative and zero
• maps complex numbers into tuples of strings

def int2base(x,b,alphabet='0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'):
    'convert an integer to its string representation in a given base'
    if b<2 or b>len(alphabet):
        if b==64: # assume base64 rather than raise error
            alphabet = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/"
        else:
            raise AssertionError("int2base base out of range")
    if isinstance(x,complex): # return a tuple
        return ( int2base(x.real,b,alphabet) , int2base(x.imag,b,alphabet) )
    if x<=0:
        if x==0:
            return alphabet[0]
        else:
            return  '-' + int2base(-x,b,alphabet)
    # else x is non-negative real
    rets=''
    while x>0:
        x,idx = divmod(x,b)
        rets = alphabet[idx] + rets
    return rets