import binascii def encode_int(num, bits): length = ((bits + 7) // 8) * 2 padded_hex = '%0*x' % (length, num) big_endian = binascii.a2b_hex(padded_hex.encode('ascii')) return big_endian def decode_int(b): return int(binascii.b2a_hex(b), 16)