Question

Given a Python integer which is within the size of 4 bits, how does one transform it – with bitwise arithmetic instead of string processing – into an integer within the size of 4 bytes, for which each bit in the original corresponds to a byte which is the bit repeated 8 times?

For example: 0b1011 should become 0b11111111000000001111111111111111

Answer 1

With apologies to ncoghlan:

expanded_bits = [
    0b00000000000000000000000000000000,
    0b00000000000000000000000011111111,
    0b00000000000000001111111100000000,
    0b00000000000000001111111111111111,
    0b00000000111111110000000000000000,
    0b00000000111111110000000011111111,
    0b00000000111111111111111100000000,
    0b00000000111111111111111111111111,
    0b11111111000000000000000000000000,
    0b11111111000000000000000011111111,
    0b11111111000000001111111100000000,
    0b11111111000000001111111111111111,
    0b11111111111111110000000000000000,
    0b11111111111111110000000011111111,
    0b11111111111111111111111100000000,
    0b11111111111111111111111111111111,
    ]

Then just index this list with the nibble you want to transform:

>>> bin(expanded_bits[0b1011])
"0b11111111000000001111111111111111"