why the inconsistency?

[Alex Martelli]

Anton Vredegoor wrote:
   ...
> Some fast way of computing a tuple (bitmask,nbits) from a long integer
> in Python can be interesting anyway, if only to facilitate bit
> twiddling experiments. Below's a -probably buggy- part of a

Sure, but I think gmpy already offers good and fast functions for all of 
these needs.  E.g., gmpy.numdigits(x, 2) for the number of bits, and
also getbit, setbit, lowbits, ...


Alex