Another way to do this is by using the bitstring module:
>>> from bitstring import BitArray
>>> input_str = '0xff'
>>> c = BitArray(hex=input_str)
>>> c.bin
'0b11111111'
And if you need to strip the leading 0b:
>>> c.bin[2:]
'11111111'
The bitstring module isn't a requirement, as jcollado's answer shows, but it has lots of performant methods for turning input into bits and manipulating them. You might find this handy (or not), for example:
>>> c.uint
255
>>> c.invert()
>>> c.bin[2:]
'00000000'
etc.
Answer from Alex Reynolds on Stack OverflowAnother way to do this is by using the bitstring module:
>>> from bitstring import BitArray
>>> input_str = '0xff'
>>> c = BitArray(hex=input_str)
>>> c.bin
'0b11111111'
And if you need to strip the leading 0b:
>>> c.bin[2:]
'11111111'
The bitstring module isn't a requirement, as jcollado's answer shows, but it has lots of performant methods for turning input into bits and manipulating them. You might find this handy (or not), for example:
>>> c.uint
255
>>> c.invert()
>>> c.bin[2:]
'00000000'
etc.
What about something like this?
>>> bin(int('ff', base=16))
'0b11111111'
This will convert the hexadecimal string you have to an integer and that integer to a string in which each byte is set to 0/1 depending on the bit-value of the integer.
As pointed out by a comment, if you need to get rid of the 0b prefix, you can do it this way:
>>> bin(int('ff', base=16))[2:]
'11111111'
... or, if you are using Python 3.9 or newer:
>>> bin(int('ff', base=16)).removeprefix('0b')
'11111111'
Note: using lstrip("0b") here will lead to 0 integer being converted to an empty string. This is almost always not what you want to do.
Another way to do this is by using the bitstring module:
>>> from bitstring import BitArray
>>> input_str = '0xff'
>>> c = BitArray(hex=input_str)
>>> c.bin
'0b11111111'
And if you need to strip the leading 0b:
>>> c.bin[2:]
'11111111'
The bitstring module isn't a requirement, as jcollado's answer shows, but it has lots of performant methods for turning input into bits and manipulating them. You might find this handy (or not), for example:
>>> c.uint
255
>>> c.invert()
>>> c.bin[2:]
'00000000'
etc.
Answer from Alex Reynolds on Stack Overflow