Convert String to Decimal in Python

Question

We can convert a datetime value in to decimal using following function.

import time
from datetime import datetime

t = datetime.now()
t1 = t.timetuple()

print time.mktime(t1)

Output :

Out[9]: 1395136322.0

Similarly is there a way to convert strings in to a decimal using python?.

Example string.

"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0"

Answer 1

You can use hash function:

>>> hash("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0")
1892010093

Answer 2

If you want an integer to uniquely identify a string, I'd go for hashing functions, like SHA. They return the same value for the same input.

import hashlib
def sha256_hash_as_int(s):
    return int(hashlib.sha256(s).hexdigest(), 16)

If you use Python 3, you first have to encode s to some concrete encoding, like UTF-8.

Furthermore, take a look at the hashlib module and decide if you really need an integer, or if the output of hexdigest() isn't OK for you, too.