Converting a hex string to a number

[Alex Martelli]

me wrote:
        ...
> Like this solution.  Is there a way to use that long as hex, so bit
> operations can be done on it piecewise?  Slice a byte, then xor it or
> and it, and put it back?

Longs, like ints and other kinds of numbers, are immutable -- so each
time you change even one bit you're allocating a new one and copying
all the rest.  Use an array.array with a typecode of 'B' (unsigned bytes),
it may prove substantially better-performing as it's mutable.


Alex