How Do You Express Binary Literals in Python?

Question

How do you express an integer as a binary number with Python literals?

I was easily able to find the answer for hex:

>>> 0x12AF
4783
>>> 0x100
256

and octal:

>>> 01267
695
>>> 0100
64

How do you use literals to express binary in Python?

Summary of Answers

Python 2.5 and earlier: can express binary using int('01010101111',2) but not with a literal.
Python 2.5 and earlier: there is no way to express binary literals.
Python 2.6 beta: You can do like so: 0b1100111 or 0B1100111.
Python 2.6 beta: will also allow 0o27 or 0O27 (second character is the letter O) to represent an octal.
Python 3.0 beta: Same as 2.6, but will no longer allow the older 027 syntax for octals.

Accepted Answer

For reference—future Python possibilities:
Starting with Python 2.6 you can express binary literals using the prefix 0b or 0B:

>>> 0b101111
47

You can also use the new bin function to get the binary representation of a number:

>>> bin(173)
'0b10101101'

Development version of the documentation: What's New in Python 2.6

Answer 2

>>> print int('01010101111',2)
687
>>> print int('11111111',2)
255

Another way.

Answer 3

How do you express binary literals in Python?

They're not "binary" literals, but rather, "integer literals". You can express integer literals with a binary format with a 0 followed by a B or b followed by a series of zeros and ones, for example:

>>> 0b0010101010
170
>>> 0B010101
21

From the Python 3 docs, these are the ways of providing integer literals in Python:

Integer literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
integer      ::=  decinteger | bininteger | octinteger | hexinteger
decinteger   ::=  nonzerodigit (["_"] digit)* | "0"+ (["_"] "0")*
bininteger   ::=  "0" ("b" | "B") (["_"] bindigit)+
octinteger   ::=  "0" ("o" | "O") (["_"] octdigit)+
hexinteger   ::=  "0" ("x" | "X") (["_"] hexdigit)+
nonzerodigit ::=  "1"..."9"
digit        ::=  "0"..."9"
bindigit     ::=  "0" | "1"
octdigit     ::=  "0"..."7"
hexdigit     ::=  digit | "a"..."f" | "A"..."F"
There is no limit for the length of integer literals apart from what can be stored in available memory.

Note that leading zeros in a non-zero decimal number are not allowed. This is for disambiguation with C-style octal literals, which Python used before version 3.0.

Some examples of integer literals:
7     2147483647                        0o177    0b100110111
3     79228162514264337593543950336     0o377    0xdeadbeef
      100_000_000_000                   0b_1110_0101
Changed in version 3.6: Underscores are now allowed for grouping purposes in literals.

Must Read

Other ways of expressing binary:

You can have the zeros and ones in a string object which can be manipulated (although you should probably just do bitwise operations on the integer in most cases) - just pass int the string of zeros and ones and the base you are converting from (2):

>>> int('010101', 2)
21

You can optionally have the 0b or 0B prefix:

>>> int('0b0010101010', 2)
170

If you pass it 0 as the base, it will assume base 10 if the string doesn't specify with a prefix:

>>> int('10101', 0)
10101
>>> int('0b10101', 0)
21

How Do You Express Binary Literals in Python?

8 Answers

How do you express binary literals in Python?

Must Read

Other ways of expressing binary:

James H. Sterling