Raw binary string --> long integer?

[ngps at my-dejanews.com]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to do the following in pure Python.

Given a binary string, e.g., '\003\004\005', convert the string into a long.
So the example should become (3<<8|4)<<8|5 == 110000010000000101 == 197,637.

The binary strings can be arbitrarily long. (Ok, up to about 256 bytes for an
RSA public key. ;-)

Hints appreciated. Cheers.

- PS

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