struct module - '<q' equivalent for old python?

[jaf]

Hi all,

In my application, I need to be able to read and write a 64-bit integer
(in little-endian format) from/to a file.  For Python 2.2, the struct
module has a nice '<q' datatype argument that will do just that, but it
isn't implemented in older versions and throws an exception.

Does anyone know of a good alternative method I could use as a fallback
in this case?  Some of the platforms I need to support don't have
Python2.2 readily available, so I'd like to be able support older
versions of Python, if possible.

Thanks,
Jeremy