Binary data in Python3
Bytes
The bytes type in python3 is an immutable sequence of 8-bit integers.
Creating empty bytes
Python
>>> null_bytes = bytes(5)
>>> null_bytes
b'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'
>>> type(null_bytes)
<class 'bytes'>
>>> null_bytes[0]
0
>>> type(null_bytes[0])
<class 'int'>
>>> len(null_bytes)
5
Bytearray
The bytearray type is the mutable version of bytes
Python
>>> null_bytes = bytearray(5)
>>> null_bytes
bytearray(b'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00')
>>> type(null_bytes)
<class 'bytearray'>
>>> null_bytes[0]
0
>>> type(null_bytes[0])
<class 'int'>
>>> null_bytes[1] = 65
>>> null_bytes
bytearray(b'\x00A\x00\x00\x00')
>>> null_bytes.append(66)
>>> null_bytes
bytearray(b'\x00A\x00\x00\x00B')
>>> len(null_bytes)
6
Python
>>> foo = bytearray(b'Python3')
>>> foo[-1] = 36
>>> foo[0] = 0x24
>>> foo[3] = b'W'[0]
>>> foo
bytearray(b'$ytWon$')
Bytes Literals
One way of creating a bytes object is bytes literals.
They are always prefixed with b or B
They must only contain ascii characters
bytes with a value of 128 or greater must be escaped with \
All bytes including non-pritable values can be expressed with \x scape sequence, which means the
next two characters are interpreted as hex digits for the character code
Python
>>> foo = b'\x54\x45\x53\x54'
>>> foo
b'TEST'
>>> type(foo)
<class 'bytes'>
Creating biggers integer from bytes
from_bytes method of int type returns the integer represented by the given array of bytes.
Python
>>> foo = b'\x01\x80'
>>> foo
b'\x01\x80'
>>> foo[0]
1
>>> foo[1]
128
>>> n = int.from_bytes(foo, byteorder='big')
>>> n
384
Endiness of integers
The byteorder argument determines the byte order used to represent the integer. If byteorder is 'big', the most
significant byte is at the beginning of the byte array. If byteorder is 'little', the most significant byte is at the end
of the byte array.
To see the native byte order of the host os, use sys.byteorder as the byte order value.
Python
>>> int.from_bytes(b'\x01\x80', byteorder='big')
384
>>> int.from_bytes(b'\x01\x80', byteorder='little')
32769
Creating bytes object
Bytes from a single of integer
Python
>>> n.to_bytes(1, byteorder='big')
b'\x82'
>>> n.to_bytes(10, byteorder='big')
b'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x82'
Bytes from a list of integers
Python
>>> bar = bytes([65,66,67,68,69])
>>> bar
b'ABCDE'
List from a bytes object
Python
>>> foo = b'abc'
>>> foo
b'abc'
>>> list(foo)
[97, 98, 99]
Bytes from Hex
Python
>>> bytes.fromhex('506573')
b'Pes'
Hex from Bytes
Python
>>> foo = b'hello'
>>> foo.hex()
'68656c6c6f'
Bytes from String
Python
>>> text = 'TheFox'
>>> text.encode('utf-8')
b'TheFox'
Base 2
Python
>>> bar = int('10101010', 2)
>>> bar
170
>>> bin(170)
'0b10101010'
Text encoding
Python
>>> foo = b'Hello'
>>> bar = foo.decode('utf-8')
>>> foo
b'Hello'
>>> bar
'Hello'
Formatting Strings
Python
>>> b = b'\xFF'
>>> '{0:b}'.format(b[0])
'11111111'
>>> '{0:x}'.format(b[0])
'ff'
>>> '{0:o}'.format(b[0])
'377'
>>> '{0:d}'.format(b[0])
'255'
Bitwise Operators
x & y AND
x | y OR
x ^ y XOR
x >> y Shift right
x << y Shift left
AND/OR
Python
>>> x = int('11110000', 2)
>>> y = int('00001111', 2)
>>> x & y
0
>>> bin(x & y)
'0b0'
>>> x | y
255
>>> bin(x | y)
'0b11111111'
XOR
Python
>>> x = int('10000001', 2)
>>> y = int('10101010', 2)
>>> x ^ y
43
>>> bin(x ^ y)
'0b101011'
Shift
Python
>>> n = int('00000110', 2)
>>> n
6
>>> n << 2
24
>>> bin(n << 2)
'0b11000'
>>> n >> 1
3
>>> bin(n >> 1)
'0b11'
