> bits = lambda x,f=lambda y,g:(y>1 and g(y>>1,g) or "")+"01"[y&1]:f(x,f) Right that is awesome in some peculiar and hard to understand way. But Python is so much better then perl in one thing making readable code, sure one can obscure it, but really there is no need to. I also do admit that most french people (programmers) I know are quite smart indeed.