Obtain & manipulate bit pattern of float as integer

Question

In Python 2.5, I have a float and I\'d like to obtain and manipulate its bit pattern as an integer.

For example, suppose I have

x = 173.3125
<         


        

Answer 1

The problem is that a Python float object might not be a IEEE 754, because it is an object (in fact they are, but internally they could hold whichever representation is more convenient)...

As leo said, you can do a type cast with ctypes, so you are enforcing a particular representation (in this case, single precision):

from ctypes import *
x = 173.3125
bits = cast(pointer(c_float(x)), POINTER(c_int32)).contents.value
print hex(bits)
#swap the least significant bit
bits ^= 1

And then back:

y = cast(pointer(c_int32(bits)), POINTER(c_float)).contents.value