Convert string to decimal (base 10) in Python

Question

I've tried to create a simple method to convert a string into a base-10 integer (in Python):

def strToNum(strData, num=0 ,numerals="0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"):
    return ((len(strData)==0) and num) or (strToNum(strData[0:-1], num+numerals.index(strData[-1])**len(strData)))

It doesn't seem to work. When I tested out 'test' as the string it outputted: 729458. And when I used some online tools to convert, I got: 1372205.

Answer 1

You can simply use int here:

>>> strs = 'test'
>>> int(strs, 36)
1372205

Or define your own function:

def func(strs):
    numerals = "0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
    return sum(numerals.index(x)*36**i for i, x in enumerate(strs[::-1]))
... 
>>> func(strs)
1372205