Question

I’ve got a very long ( 1000 digit ) number.
I want to convert it into a list , how would you go about it since :

list(n)

TypeError: ‘long’ object is not
iterable

Answer 1

It’s not exactly clear what you’re asking for, but if what you want is to iterate over the digits, just convert it to a string:

x = str(n)

You can iterate over a string as if it were a list.

If you really want a true list (only reason I can think of is you want to modify digits), you can do:

xl = list(str(n))

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(In the event someone comes along looking for a way to convert an 1000-digit integer into a list of bytes, the answer is… normally don’t, it’s not really meaningful in most contexts (numbers that big aren’t stored/manipulated as typical native data types). If you need to get it into a packed binary form, look into NumPy, which you should probably be using anyway if you’re routinely dealing with numbers this large.

If you’ve got a more typical number (e.g. 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits), check out the included struct module.)