Update: 2014-03-27 – python-bitmath is now in Fedora!

Background

I’ve written a new Python module which I’m calling bitmath.

Given my day job as a System Administrator, and the content of my upcoming book on Linux virtual disks, I frequently find myself in situations requiring me to convert file sizes into various other formats. I recall far too many instances of having to do unit conversions mid-code in projects (does this look familiar to anyone else?):

Thus, out of necessity, bitmath was born.

bitmath

I’m going to plagiarize myself here and rip the long description right from the project:

bitmath simplifies many facets of interacting with file sizes in various units. Examples include: converting between SI and NIST prefix units (GiB to kB), converting between units of the same type (SI to SI, or NIST to NIST), basic arithmetic operations (subtracting 42KiB from 50GiB), and rich comparison operations (1024 Bytes == 1KiB).

In addition to the conversion and math operations, bitmath provides human readable representations of values which are suitable for use in interactive shells as well as larger scripts and applications.

Anyone not deeply invested in the heartache that comes with converting base-2 and base-10 prefix units can stop reading now.

Why Should You Care?

bitmath is Pythonic

bitmath finally provides a uniform way to manipulate these units in a way which is natural to Python programmers. There’s nothing special or unusual required to work with bitmath objects. You can add them, subtract them, multiply and divide them — just like you’re already used to with the int and float objects. bitmath objects support all of the standard Rich Comparison Operators as well!

bitmath converts anything

Converting bitmath objects is a first-class supported operation. Even more complex conversions, like converting from Mibibits to Kilobytes, is trivial. This functionality is supported in both directions: from the lowliest Bit() object through the grand EiB() object. That is to say, any bitmath object, whether it be base-2 (NIST ‘kibi’ and ‘gibi’ style) or base-10 (SI ‘kilo’ and ‘giga’ style), supports conversion (without loss of accuracy) to any other valid prefix unit.

bitmath objects print out nicely

As the previous two examples demonstrated, bitmath objects have useful console representations, as well as string representations. In a future release the format string for this may be configurable.

Getting bitmath

Fedora/RHEL6 users will need to wait a bit longer for a proper yum install command to be available, as the package is currently sitting in the package-review queue awaiting judgement. Update: 2014-03-27: python-bitmath is now in Fedora!

However, there are several other methods available for installation: installing from PyPi, building your own RPM, and from setup/distutils.

My first blog post (co-authored wtih Steve Milner) on the Red Hat Developer Blog (@RHELDevelop) has just been published!

Feeling Developer Pain

[..] this post describes our journey from initially trying to implement a simple solution to improve the day-to-day lives of developers, through the technical limitations we experienced along the way, and finally arrives at the empathy for our developers we’ve gained from that experience. We’ll wrap up with a note on how Red Hat Software Collections (announced as GA in September) would’ve simplified our development process.

Enjoy!

See also:

• GitHub: jsonstats – System information over a RESTful interface
• GitHub: Talook – Web frontend to jsonstats