Question

How do I convert a hex string to an integer?

"0xffff"   ⟶   65535 "ffff"     ⟶   65535 

Answer 1

Without the 0x prefix, you need to specify the base explicitly, otherwise there’s no way to tell:

x = int("deadbeef", 16) 

With the 0x prefix, Python can distinguish hex and decimal automatically:

>>> print(int("0xdeadbeef", 0)) 3735928559 >>> print(int("10", 0)) 10 

(You must specify 0 as the base in order to invoke this prefix-guessing behavior; if you omit the second parameter, int() will assume base-10.)