Pythonic bit twiddling

[Paul Rubin]

Jim Richardson <warlock at eskimo.com> writes:
> Thanks, this isn't a bad idea (I am not really python guru, so am easily
> overwhelmed sometimes :) I will have to think on it. Speed isn't much of
> an issue, as the data is only 9600 and each packet needs a checksum, and
> usually, only 8-10 packets a second. 
>  Another reply mentioned a "byte" operator, but I can't find that
> anywhere in my python docs. Is it something not in the default setup? 

That was me.  There's no byte operator.  I was using 'byte' as a
variable name to denote an integer variable that held an 8-bit number.
Sorry for the confusion.