Integer to bitfield as a list

Question

I\'ve created a method to convert an int to a bitfield (in a list) and it works, but I\'m sure there is more elegant solution- I\'ve just been staring at it for to

Answer 1

How about this:

def bitfield(n):
    return [int(digit) for digit in bin(n)[2:]] # [2:] to chop off the "0b" part 

This gives you

>>> bitfield(123)
[1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1]
>>> bitfield(255)
[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
>>> bitfield(1234567)
[1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1]

This only works for positive integers, though.

EDIT:

Conversion to int using int() is a bit overkill here. This is a lot faster:

def bitfield(n):
    return [1 if digit=='1' else 0 for digit in bin(n)[2:]]

See the timings:

>>> import timeit
>>> timeit.timeit("[int(digit) for digit in bin(123)[2:]]")
7.895014818543946
>>> timeit.timeit("[123 >> i & 1 for i in range(7,-1,-1)]")
2.966295244250407
>>> timeit.timeit("[1 if digit=='1' else 0 for digit in bin(123)[2:]]")
1.7918431924733795