How do I write a long integer as binary in Python?

Question

In Python, long integers have unlimited precision. I would like to write a 16 byte (128 bit) integer to a file. struct from the standard library supports only u

Answer 1

I think for unsigned integers (and ignoring endianness) something like

import binascii

def binify(x):
    h = hex(x)[2:].rstrip('L')
    return binascii.unhexlify('0'*(32-len(h))+h)

>>> for i in 0, 1, 2**128-1:
...     print i, repr(binify(i))
... 
0 '\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'
1 '\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01'
340282366920938463463374607431768211455 '\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff'

might technically satisfy the requirements of having non-Python-specific output, not using an explicit mask, and (I assume) not using any non-standard modules. Not particularly elegant, though.