bit fields - Does Python have a bitfield type?

Question

I need a compact representation of an array of booleans, does Python have a builtin bitfield type or will I need to find an alternate solution?

Answer 1

If you mainly want to be able to name your bit fields and easily manipulate them, e.g. to work with flags represented as single bits in a communications protocol, then you can use the standard Structure and Union features of ctypes, as described at How Do I Properly Declare a ctype Structure + Union in Python? - Stack Overflow

For example, to work with the 4 least-significant bits of a byte individually, just name them from least to most significant in a LittleEndianStructure. You use a union to provide access to the same data as a byte or int so you can move the data in or out of the communication protocol. In this case that is done via the flags.asbyte field:

import ctypes
c_uint8 = ctypes.c_uint8

class Flags_bits(ctypes.LittleEndianStructure):
    _fields_ = [
            ("logout", c_uint8, 1),
            ("userswitch", c_uint8, 1),
            ("suspend", c_uint8, 1),
            ("idle", c_uint8, 1),
        ]

class Flags(ctypes.Union):
    _fields_ = [("b", Flags_bits),
                ("asbyte", c_uint8)]

flags = Flags()
flags.asbyte = 0xc

print(flags.b.idle)
print(flags.b.suspend)
print(flags.b.userswitch)
print(flags.b.logout)

The four bits (which I've printed here starting with the most significant, which seems more natural when printing) are 1, 1, 0, 0, i.e. 0xc in binary.