Simple construction, analysis and modification of binary data.
bitstring is a Python module to help make the creation and analysis of binary data as simple and efficient as possible.
It has been maintained since 2006 and now has many millions of downloads per year.
November 2023: bitstring 4.1.3 released. Version 4.1 is a large update in terms of how much of the code has changed.
See the release notes for details. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.
Extensive documentation for the bitstring module is available. Some starting points are given below:
You can also try out the interactive walkthrough notebook on binder.
To see what been added, improved or fixed, and also to see what's coming in the next version, see the release notes.
$ pip install bitstring
>>> 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))
>>> 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')
>>> b = BitStream('0x160120f')
>>> b.read(12).hex
'160'
>>> b.pos = 0
>>> b.read('uint12')
352
>>> b.readlist('uint12, bin3')
[288, '111']
>>> c = BitArray('0b00010010010010001111') # c.hex == '0x1248f'
>>> c.find('0x48')
(8,)
>>> c.replace('0b001', '0xabc')
>>> c.insert('0b0000', pos=3)
>>> del c[12:16]
>>> from bitstring import Array
>>> a = Array('uint7', [9, 100, 3, 1])
>>> a.data
BitArray('0x1390181')
>>> a[::2] *= 5
>>> a
Array('uint7', [45, 100, 15, 1])
The 700+ unit tests should all pass. They can be run from the root of the project with
python -m unittest
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.
Copyright (c) 2006 - 2023 Scott Griffiths