Determining combination of bits

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Larry Bates <lbates at syscononline.com> wrote:
>  Sounds a lot like a homework assignment

Indeed!

> but I'll give you some "hints".
> 
>  1) Use bit shifting operator (>>) and boolean &
>      operator to isolate each bit in the integer.

Shifting isn't necessary - D.keys() contains a list of all possible
(for this problem) binary numbers.

>  2) It will be either zero or one.  Build up a
>      list of these which will represent the power
>      of two that each one bit represents.

Whenever you think "build up a list" you should be thinking list
comprehension.  A conditional add to a list should make you think of
the if clause of a list comprehension.

>>> D={1:'one',2:'two',4:'three',8:'four',16:'five'}
>>> def f(n): return [D[i] for i in D.keys() if XXXXX]
... 
>>> f(9)
['four', 'one']
>>> f(22)
['two', 'three', 'five']
>>> f(25)
['four', 'one', 'five']

I've left XXXXX as an excercise - see 1) above for a hint ;-)

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick