
**bitstring** is a pure Python module designed to help make
the creation and analysis of binary data as simple and natural as possible.
It has been maintained since 2006 and now has about 20 million downloads per year.
You can try out the interactive walkthrough notebook on [binder](https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/scott-griffiths/bitstring/main?labpath=doc%2Fwalkthrough.ipynb), or take a look at the [static version](https://github.com/scott-griffiths/bitstring/blob/main/doc/walkthrough.ipynb).
[](https://github.com/scott-griffiths/bitstring/actions/workflows/ci.yml)
[](https://bitstring.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
[](https://pypistats.org/packages/bitstring)
[](https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/scott-griffiths/bitstring/main?labpath=doc%2Fwalkthrough.ipynb)
Overview
--------
* Create bitstrings from hex, octal, binary, files, formatted strings, bytes, integers and floats of different endiannesses.
* Powerful binary packing and unpacking functions.
* Bit-level slicing, joining, searching, replacing and more.
* Read from and interpret bitstrings as streams of binary data.
* Rich API - chances are that whatever you want to do there's a simple and elegant way of doing it.
* Open source software, released under the MIT licence.
> **Note** \
> Version 4.0 of bitstring only supports Python 3.7 and later. \
> Use bitstring version 3.1 if you're using Python 2.7 or 3.6 or earlier.
Documentation
-------------
The manual for the bitstring module is available at [Read the Docs](https://bitstring.readthedocs.org).
It contains a walk-through of all the features and a complete [reference section](https://bitstring.readthedocs.io/en/stable/quick_ref.html).
Examples
--------
### Installation
$ pip install bitstring
### [Creation](https://bitstring.readthedocs.io/en/stable/creation.html)
>>> from bitstring import Bits, BitArray, BitStream, pack
>>> a = BitArray(bin='00101')
>>> b = Bits(a_file_object)
>>> c = BitArray('0xff, 0b101, 0o65, uint6=22')
>>> d = pack('intle16, hex=a, 0b1', 100, a='0x34f')
>>> e = pack('<16h', *range(16))
### [Different interpretations, slicing and concatenation](https://bitstring.readthedocs.io/en/stable/interpretation.html)
>>> a = BitArray('0x3348')
>>> a.hex, a.bin, a.uint, a.float, a.bytes
('3348', '0011001101001000', 13128, 0.2275390625, b'3H')
>>> a[10:3:-1].bin
'0101100'
>>> '0b100' + 3*a
BitArray('0x866906690669, 0b000')
### [Reading data sequentially](https://bitstring.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reading.html)
>>> b = BitStream('0x160120f')
>>> b.read(12).hex
'160'
>>> b.pos = 0
>>> b.read('uint12')
352
>>> b.readlist('uint12, bin3')
[288, '111']
### [Searching, inserting and deleting](https://bitstring.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reading.html#finding-and-replacing)
>>> c = BitArray('0b00010010010010001111') # c.hex == '0x1248f'
>>> c.find('0x48')
(8,)
>>> c.replace('0b001', '0xabc')
>>> c.insert('0b0000', pos=3)
>>> del c[12:16]
New in version 4.0
------------------
* New Python 3.7 minimum requirement. The code has been updated with type hints and legacy code removed.
* Shorter and more versative properties are available.
>>> a = BitArray('u8=20')
>>> a += '0b0011, f16=5.52'
>>> a[12:].f16
5.51953125
* A useful new pretty printing method. Gives a formatted view of a singe or two interpretations of the
binary data.
>>> a = Bits(bytes=b'hello world!!')
>>> a.pp('bin, hex', width=40)
0: 01101000 01100101 68 65
16: 01101100 01101100 6c 6c
32: 01101111 00100000 6f 20
48: 01110111 01101111 77 6f
64: 01110010 01101100 72 6c
80: 01100100 00100001 64 21
96: 00100001 21
* LSB0 option (beta). This indexes the bits with the least significant bit being bit zero. This is the
opposite way to the standard Python containers but is usual in some relevant fields.
>>> bitstring.lsb0 = True
>>> s = BitArray('0b00000')
>>> s[0] = 1
>>> s.bin
'00001'
This feature is still considered a beta as there may be issues with edge cases, especially around the
interaction with the 'stream' features of the `BitStream` and `ConstBitStream` classes. For most usage
cases it should be solid though, so please report any bugs in the issue tracker.
* Command line usage. Useful for quick interpretations of binary data.
$ python -m bitstring int:16=-400
0xfe70
* Support for 16 bit floating point types (both IEEE and bfloat).
Unit Tests
----------
The 600+ unit tests should all pass. They can be run from the root of the project with
python -m unittest
Credits
-------
Created by Scott Griffiths in 2006 to help with ad hoc parsing and creation of compressed video files.
Maintained and expanded ever since as it became unexpectedly popular. Thanks to all those who have contributed ideas
and code (and bug reports) over the years.
<sub>Copyright (c) 2006 - 2023 Scott Griffiths</sub>