Here is some information and goals related to Python bit manipulation, binary manipulation.

Some tasks include:

• Turn "11011000111101..." into bytes, (padded left or right, 0 or 1,) and vice versa.
• Slice ranges of bits
• Rotate bits, addressed by the bit. That is, say: "rotate bits 13-17, wrapping around the edges," or, "rotate bits 13-17, lose bits on the one side, set all new bits to 0."
• Similarly, revert regions of bits, apply logic to regions of bits, etc.,.
• Switch Endianness, with different block sizes.
• Apply operations in block groupings: ex: apply XOR 10101 (5 bits) repeatedly across a field.

Relevant libraries include:

• ctypes — A foreign function library for Python — Python Documentation - part of the standard library

• bitarray - efficient arrays of booleans -- C extension

• python-bitstring - A Python module to help you manage your bits. - Google Project Hosting

• bitstruct - This module performs conversions between Python values and C bit field structs represented as Python bytearrays.

Some simple code is at ActiveState Code Recipes: Bit-field manipulation (in Python 2 syntax).

Here are some other examples.

Manipulations

To integer.

   1 >>> print(int('00100001', 2))
   2 33

To hex string. Note that you don't need to use x8 bits.

   1 >>> print("0x%x" % int('11111111', 2))
   2 0xff
   3 >>> print("0x%x" % int('0110110110', 2))
   4 0x1b6
   5 >>> print("0x%x" % int('0010101110101100111010101101010111110101010101', 2))
   6 0xaeb3ab57d55

To character. 8 bits max.

   1 >>> chr(int('111011', 2))
   2 ';'
   3 >>> chr(int('1110110', 2))
   4 'v'
   5 >>> chr(int('11101101', 2))
   6 '\xed'

Characters to integers, but not to strings of 1's and 0's.

   1 >>> int('01110101', 2)
   2 117