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Converts a signed integer to its little-endian byte representation, automatically determining the minimum number of bytes needed based on the integer's bit length.

Purpose

This utility function serializes signed integers into byte arrays using little-endian byte order. It calculates the minimum number of bytes required to represent the integer (including sign bit) and converts it to bytes. This is commonly used for low-level data serialization, hashing operations, or binary protocol implementations where integers need to be converted to byte representations.

Source Code

def _int_to_bytes(i):
    num_bytes = (i.bit_length() + 8) // 8
    return i.to_bytes(num_bytes, "little", signed=True)

Parameters

Parameter Details

i: A signed integer (positive or negative) to be converted to bytes. Can be any Python integer of arbitrary size. The function will automatically determine how many bytes are needed to represent this value including its sign.

Return Value

Returns a bytes object containing the little-endian byte representation of the input integer. The length of the returned bytes object is automatically calculated as (bit_length + 8) // 8, which ensures enough bytes to represent the integer including its sign bit. For example, 0 returns b'\x00', 255 returns b'\xff\x00', and -1 returns b'\xff'.

Usage Example

# Convert positive integer to bytes
result = _int_to_bytes(255)
print(result)  # b'\xff\x00'

# Convert negative integer to bytes
result = _int_to_bytes(-1)
print(result)  # b'\xff'

# Convert zero to bytes
result = _int_to_bytes(0)
print(result)  # b'\x00'

# Convert large integer to bytes
result = _int_to_bytes(65535)
print(result)  # b'\xff\xff\x00'

# Convert back to integer
original = 12345
bytes_repr = _int_to_bytes(original)
restored = int.from_bytes(bytes_repr, 'little', signed=True)
print(original == restored)  # True

Best Practices

• This function is designed for signed integers only. The 'signed=True' parameter ensures proper handling of negative numbers.
• The function uses little-endian byte order, which is important when interoperating with systems that expect specific byte ordering.
• The byte length calculation (i.bit_length() + 8) // 8 ensures at least one byte is allocated even for zero, and accounts for the sign bit.
• To convert bytes back to integer, use int.from_bytes(bytes_obj, 'little', signed=True) with matching parameters.
• This function is typically used internally for hashing or serialization purposes rather than as a public API.
• For very large integers, this function will allocate the appropriate number of bytes automatically, making it suitable for arbitrary-precision integers.

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