Backport of builtin function bin() for python 2.4

Question

I wrote a program that uses builtin function bin(), but this function is new in Python version 2.6 and I would like to run this application also in Python versions 2.4 and 2.5.

Is there some backport of bin() for 2.4?

Answer 1

You can try this version (credit goes to the original author):

def bin(x):
    """
    bin(number) -> string

    Stringifies an int or long in base 2.
    """
    if x < 0: 
        return '-' + bin(-x)
    out = []
    if x == 0: 
        out.append('0')
    while x > 0:
        out.append('01'[x & 1])
        x >>= 1
        pass
    try: 
        return '0b' + ''.join(reversed(out))
    except NameError, ne2: 
        out.reverse()
    return '0b' + ''.join(out)