How can I read 3 bytes as an integer?
Does struct module provide something like that?
I can read in 3 bytes and add an extra \\x00 and then interpret it as a 4-b
I think from 3.2, int
developed a new method .from_bytes
, so you're able to use the following instead of struct.unpack
:
int.from_bytes(b'\x00\x00\x01', 'big')
# 1
For reference, see: http://docs.python.org/dev/library/stdtypes.html#int.from_bytes
Another option is to just do the bit shifting yourself.
Big Endian:
ba = # 3 byte bytearray
v = ba[0] << 16 | ba[1] << 8 | ba[2]
Little Endian
ba = # 3 byte bytearray
v = ba[2] << 16 | ba[1] << 8 | ba[0]
The struct module has no option for 3-byte integers, so I think your idea of appending '\x00' is the easiest way.
In [30]: import struct
In [38]: struct.pack('>3b',0,0,1)
Out[38]: '\x00\x00\x01'
In [39]: struct.unpack('>i','\x00'+'\x00\x00\x01')
Out[39]: (1,)
An alternative for python 2 and without the struct
module would be:
>>> s = '\x61\x62\xff'
>>> a = sum([ord(b) * 2**(8*n) for (b, n) in zip(s, range(len(s))[::-1])])
>>> print a
6382335
where the byte ordering is big-endian. This gives the same result as with unutbu answer:
>>> print struct.unpack('>I', '\x00' + s)[0]
6382335
For little-endian byte ordering the conversion would be:
>>> a = sum([ord(b) * 2**(8*n) for (b, n) in zip(s, range(len(s)))])
>>> print a
16736865
>>> print struct.unpack('<I', s + '\x00')[0]
16736865