Introduction¶

The bitstring classes¶

Five classes are provided by the bitstring module, four are simple containers of bits:

Bits: This is the most basic class. It is immutable and so its contents can’t be changed after creation.
BitArray: This adds mutating methods to its base class.
ConstBitStream: This adds methods and properties to allow the bits to be treated as a stream of bits, with a bit position and reading/parsing methods.
BitStream: This is the most versatile class, having both the bitstream methods and the mutating methods.

Bits and BitArray are intended to loosely mirror the bytes and bytearray types in Python. The term ‘bitstring’ is used in this documentation to refer generically to any of these four classes.

The fifth class is Array which is a container of fixed-length bitstrings. The rest of this introduction mostly concerns the more basic types - for more details on Array you can go directly to the reference documentation, but understanding how bit format strings are specified will be helpful.

To summarise when to use each class:

If you need to change the contents of the bitstring then you must use BitArray or BitStream. Truncating, replacing, inserting, appending etc. are not available for the const classes.
If you need to use a bitstring as the key in a dictionary or as a member of a set then you must use Bits or a ConstBitStream. As BitArray and BitStream objects are mutable they do not support hashing and so cannot be used in these ways.
If you are creating directly from a file then a BitArray or BitStream will read the whole file into memory whereas a Bits or ConstBitStream will not, so using the const classes allows extremely large files to be examined.
If you don’t need the extra functionality of a particular class then the simpler ones might be faster and more memory efficient. The fastest and most memory efficient class is Bits.

The Bits class is the base class of the other three class. This means that isinstance(s, Bits) will be true if s is an instance of any of the four classes.

Bits(auto, /, length: Optional[int], offset: Optional[int], **kwargs)

When initialising a bitstring you need to specify at most one initialiser. This can either be the first parameter in the constructor (‘auto’ initialisation, described below), or using a keyword argument for a data type:

bytes : A bytes object, for example read from a binary file.
hex, oct, bin: Hexadecimal, octal or binary strings.
int, uint: Signed or unsigned bit-wise big-endian binary integers.
intle, uintle: Signed or unsigned byte-wise little-endian binary integers.
intbe, uintbe: Signed or unsigned byte-wise big-endian binary integers.
intne, uintne: Signed or unsigned byte-wise native-endian binary integers.
float / floatbe, floatle, floatne: Big, little and native endian floating point numbers.
bool : A boolean (i.e. True or False).
filename : Directly from a file, without reading into memory if using Bits or ConstBitStream.

There are also various other flavours of 16-bit, 8-bit and smaller floating point types (see Exotic Floating Point Formats) and exponential-Golomb integer types (see Exponential-Golomb Codes).

The hex, oct, bin, float, int and uint can all be shortened to just their initial letters. The data type name can be combined with its length if appropriate, or the length can be specified separately.

For example:

a = Bits(hex='deadbeef')
b = BitArray(float32=100.25)  # or = BitArray(float=100.25, length=32)
c = ConstBitStream(filename='a_big_file')
d = Bits(u12=105)
e = BitArray(bool=True)

Note that some types need a length to be specified, some don’t need one, and others can infer the length from the value.

Another way to create a bitstring is via the pack function, which packs multiple values according to a given format. See the entry on pack for more information.

The auto initialiser¶

The first parameter when creating a bitstring is a positional only parameter, referred to as ‘auto’, that can be a variety of types:

An iterable, whose elements will be evaluated as booleans (imagine calling bool() on each item) and the bits set to 1 for True items and 0 for False items.
A positive integer, used to create a bitstring of that many zero bits.
A file object, opened in binary mode, from which the bitstring will be formed.
A bytearray or bytes object.
An array object from the built-in array module. This is used after being converted to it’s constituent byte data via its tobytes method.
A bitarray or frozenbitarray object from the 3rd party bitarray package.

If it is a string then that string will be parsed into tokens to construct the binary data:

Starting with '0x' or 'hex=' implies hexadecimal. e.g. '0x013ff', 'hex=013ff'
Starting with '0o' or 'oct=' implies octal. e.g. '0o755', 'oct=755'
Starting with '0b' or 'bin=' implies binary. e.g. '0b0011010', 'bin=0011010'
Starting with 'int' or 'uint' followed by a length in bits and '=' gives base-2 integers. e.g. 'uint8=255', 'int4=-7'
To get big, little and native-endian whole-byte integers append 'be', 'le' or 'ne' respectively to the 'uint' or 'int' identifier. e.g. 'uintle32=1', 'intne16=-23'
For floating point numbers use 'float' followed by the length in bits and '=' and the number. The default is big-endian, but you can also append 'be', 'le' or 'ne' as with integers. e.g. 'float64=0.2', 'floatle32=-0.3e12'
Starting with 'ue=', 'uie=', 'se=' or 'sie=' implies an exponential-Golomb coded integer. e.g. 'ue=12', 'sie=-4'

Multiples tokens can be joined by separating them with commas, so for example 'uint4=4, 0b1, se=-1' represents the concatenation of three elements.

Parentheses and multiplicative factors can also be used, for example '2*(0b10, 0xf)' is equivalent to '0b10, 0xf, 0b10, 0xf'. The multiplying factor must come before the thing it is being used to repeat.

Promotion to bitstrings¶

Almost anywhere that a bitstring is expected you can substitute something that will get ‘auto’ promoted to a bitstring. For example:

>>> BitArray('0xf') == '0b1111'
True

Here the equals operator is expecting another bitstring so creates one from the string. The right hand side gets promoted to Bits('0b1111').

Methods that need another bitstring as a parameter will also ‘auto’ promote, for example:

for bs in s.split('0x40'):
    if bs.endswith('0b111'):
        bs.append([1, 0])
        ...

if 'u8=42' in bs:
    bs.prepend(b'\x01')

which illustrates a variety of methods promoting strings, iterables and a bytes object to bitstrings.

Anything that can be used as the first parameter of the Bits constructor can be auto promoted to a bitstring where one is expected, with the exception of integers. Integers won’t be auto promoted, but instead will raise a TypeError:

>>> a = BitArray(100)  # Create bitstring with 100 zeroed bits.
>>> a += 0xff          # TypeError - 0xff is the same as the integer 255.
>>> a += '0xff'        # Probably what was meant - append eight '1' bits.
>>> a += Bits(255)     # If you really want to do it then code it explicitly.

`BitsType`¶

The BitsType type is used in the documentation in a number of places where an object of any type that can be promoted to a bitstring is acceptable.

It’s just a union of types rather than an actual class (though it’s documented here as a class as I could find no alternative). It’s not user accessible, but is just a shorthand way of saying any of the above types.

Keyword initialisers¶

If the ‘auto’ initialiser isn’t used then at most one keyword initialiser can be used.

From a hexadecimal string¶

>>> c = BitArray(hex='0x000001b3')
>>> c.hex
'000001b3'

The initial 0x or 0X is optional. Whitespace is also allowed and is ignored. Note that the leading zeros are significant, so the length of c will be 32.

If you include the initial 0x then you can use the ‘auto’ initialiser instead. As it is the first parameter in __init__ this will work equally well:

c = BitArray('0x000001b3')

From a binary string¶

>>> d = BitArray(bin='0011 00')
>>> d.bin
'001100'

An initial 0b or 0B is optional and whitespace will be ignored.

As with hex, the ‘auto’ initialiser will work if the binary string is prefixed by 0b:

>>> d = BitArray('0b001100')

From an octal string¶

>>> o = BitArray(oct='34100')
>>> o.oct
'34100'

An initial 0o or 0O is optional, but 0o (a zero and lower-case ‘o’) is preferred as it is slightly more readable.

As with hex and bin, the ‘auto’ initialiser will work if the octal string is prefixed by 0o:

>>> o = BitArray('0o34100')

From an integer¶

>>> e = BitArray(uint=45, length=12)
>>> f = BitArray(int=-1, length=7)
>>> e.bin
'000000101101'
>>> f.bin
'1111111'

For initialisation with signed and unsigned binary integers (int and uint respectively) the length parameter is mandatory, and must be large enough to contain the integer. So for example if length is 8 then uint can be in the range 0 to 255, while int can range from -128 to 127. Two’s complement is used to represent negative numbers.

The ‘auto’ initialiser can be used by giving the length in bits immediately after the int or uint token, followed by an equals sign then the value:

>>> e = BitArray('uint12=45')
>>> f = BitArray('int7=-1')

The uint and int names can be shortened to just u and i respectively. For mutable bitstrings you can change value by assigning to a property with a length:

>>> e = BitArray()
>>> e.u12 = 45
>>> f = BitArray()
>>> f.i7 = -1

The plain int and uint initialisers are bit-wise big-endian. That is to say that the most significant bit comes first and the least significant bit comes last, so the unsigned number one will have a 1 as its final bit with all other bits set to 0. These can be any number of bits long. For whole-byte bitstring objects there are more options available with different endiannesses.

Big and little-endian integers¶

>>> big_endian = BitArray(uintbe=1, length=16)
>>> little_endian = BitArray(uintle=1, length=16)
>>> native_endian = BitArray(uintne=1, length=16)

There are unsigned and signed versions of three additional ‘endian’ types. The unsigned versions are used above to create three bitstrings.

The first of these, big_endian, is equivalent to just using the plain bit-wise big-endian uint initialiser, except that all intbe or uintbe interpretations must be of whole-byte bitstrings, otherwise a ValueError is raised.

The second, little_endian, is interpreted as least significant byte first, i.e. it is a byte reversal of big_endian. So we have:

>>> big_endian.hex
'0001'
>>> little_endian.hex
'0100'

Finally we have native_endian, which will equal either big_endian or little_endian, depending on whether you are running on a big or little-endian machine (if you really need to check then use import sys; sys.byteorder).

From a floating point number¶

>>> f1 = BitArray(float=10.3, length=32)
>>> f2 = BitArray('float64=5.4e31')

Floating point numbers can be used for initialisation provided that the bitstring is 16, 32 or 64 bits long. Standard Python floating point numbers are 64 bits long, so if you use 32 bits then some accuracy could be lost. The 16 bit version has very limited range and is used mainly in specialised areas such as machine learning.

The exact bits used to represent the floating point number will conform to the IEEE 754 standard, even if the machine being used does not use that standard internally.

Similar to the situation with integers there are big and little endian versions. The plain float is big endian and so floatbe is just an alias.

As with other initialisers you can also ‘auto’ initialise, as demonstrated with the second example below:

>>> little_endian = BitArray(floatle=0.0, length=64)
>>> native_endian = BitArray('floatne:32=-6.3')

See also Exotic Floating Point Formats for information on other floating point representations that are supported (bfloat and different 8-bit and smaller float formats).

From exponential-Golomb codes¶

Initialisation with integers represented by exponential-Golomb codes is also possible. ue is an unsigned code while se is a signed code. Interleaved exponential-Golomb codes are also supported via uie and sie:

>>> g = BitArray(ue=12)
>>> h = BitArray(se=-402)
>>> g.bin
'0001101'
>>> h.bin
'0000000001100100101'

For these initialisers the length of the bitstring is fixed by the value it is initialised with, so the length parameter must not be supplied and it is an error to do so. If you don’t know what exponential-Golomb codes are then you are in good company, but they are quite interesting, so I’ve included a section on them (see Exponential-Golomb Codes).

The ‘auto’ initialiser may also be used by giving an equals sign and the value immediately after a ue or se token:

>>> g = BitArray('ue=12')
>>> h = BitArray('se=-402')

You may wonder why you would bother doing this in this case as the syntax is slightly longer. Hopefully all will become clear in the next section.

From raw byte data¶

Using the length and offset parameters to specify the length in bits and an offset at the start to be ignored is particularly useful when initialising from raw data or from a file.

a = BitArray(bytes=b'\x00\x01\x02\xff', length=28, offset=1)
b = BitArray(bytes=open("somefile", 'rb').read())

The length parameter is optional; it defaults to the length of the data in bits (and so will be a multiple of 8). You can use it to truncate some bits from the end of the bitstring. The offset parameter is also optional and is used to truncate bits at the start of the data.

You can also use a bytearray or a bytes object, either explicitly with a bytes=some_bytearray keyword or via the ‘auto’ initialiser:

c = BitArray(a_bytearray_object)
d = BitArray(b'\x23g$5')

From a file¶

Using the filename initialiser allows a file to be analysed without the need to read it all into memory. The way to create a file-based bitstring is:

p = Bits(filename="my200GBfile")

This will open the file in binary read-only mode. The file will only be read as and when other operations require it, and the contents of the file will not be changed by any operations. If only a portion of the file is needed then the offset and length parameters (specified in bits) can be used.

Note that we created a Bits here rather than a BitArray, as they have quite different behaviour in this case. The immutable Bits will never read the file into memory (except as needed by other operations), whereas if we had created a BitArray then the whole of the file would immediately have been read into memory. This is because in creating a BitArray you are implicitly saying that you want to modify it, and so it needs to be in memory.

It’s also possible to use the ‘auto’ initialiser for file objects. It’s as simple as:

f = open('my200GBfile', 'rb')
p = Bits(f)

Note

For the immutable types Bits and ConstBitstream the file is memory mapped (mmap) in a read-only mode for efficiency.

This behaves slightly differently depending on the platform; in particular Windows will lock the file against any further writing whereas Unix-like systems will not. This means that you won’t be able to write to the file from Windows OS while the Bits or ConstBitStream object exists.

The work-arounds for this are to either (i) Delete the object before opening the file for writing, (ii) Use either BitArray or BitStream which will read the whole file into memory or (iii) Stop using Windows (or run in WSL).