Encoding a 128 bit integer in Python?
Inspired by the "coding scheme" of the answer to this question , I implemented my own coding algorithm in Python.
This is how it looks:
import random
from math import pow
from string import ascii_letters, digits
# RFC 2396 unreserved URI characters
unreserved = '-_.!~*\'()'
characters = ascii_letters + digits + unreserved
size = len(characters)
seq = range(0,size)
# Seed random generator with same randomly generated number
random.seed(914576904)
random.shuffle(seq)
dictionary = dict(zip(seq, characters))
reverse_dictionary = dict((v,k) for k,v in dictionary.iteritems())
def encode(n):
d = []
n = n
while n > 0:
qr = divmod(n, size)
n = qr[0]
d.append(qr[1])
chars = ''
for i in d:
chars += dictionary[i]
return chars
def decode(str):
d = []
for c in str:
d.append(reverse_dictionary[c])
value = 0
for i in range(0, len(d)):
value += d[i] * pow(size, i)
return value
The problem I'm running into is encoding and decoding very large integers. For example, this is how large numbers are currently being encoded and decoded:
s = encode(88291326719355847026813766449910520462)
# print s -> "3_r(AUqqMvPRkf~JXaWj8"
i = decode(s)
# print i -> "8.82913267194e+37"
# print long(i) -> "88291326719355843047833376688611262464"
The highest 16 places match up perfectly, but after them the number deviates from the original.
I guess this is a precision issue with very large integers when dividing in Python. Is there a way to get around this problem? Or is there another problem that I am not aware of?
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The problem is this line:
value += d[i] * pow(size, i)
You seem to be using math.pow
the inline method here instead pow
. It returns a floating point number, so you lose precision for your large numbers. You must use the built-in operator, pow
or **
, better yet, store the current cardinality of the base in an integer variable:
def decode(s):
d = [reverse_dictionary[c] for c in s]
result, power = 0, 1
for x in d:
result += x * power
power *= size
return result
Now it gives me the following output:
print decode(encode(88291326719355847026813766449910520462))
# => 88291326719355847026813766449910520462
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