SHA-based subclass for random module

Raymond Hettinger python at rcn.com
Thu Mar 25 05:07:58 EST 2004


> > What might be nice is if longs had methods for converting to and from
> > bytestrings.  
> 
> I was thinking the same.  How about something like:
> 
>    bigNumber = long(bigNumberString, 256)
> 
>    bigNumberString = bigNumber.tostring()
> 
> The string->long conversion treats a big-endian byte string as "base 
> 256", and converts it to a non-negative integer.
> 
> The long->string conversion would only work on non-negative integers. 
> It's 'inspired' by the array module's "tostring()" method, which returns 
> a similarly low-level string.
> 
> Big-endian seems the common way to do this, at least in cryptography, in 
> the common ASN.1 encodings, and in the libraries I've seen.

If this is something you want, file a feature request on SF.


Raymond



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