Fastest way to convert a byte of integer into a list

[Paul Rubin]

John Machin <sjmachin at lexicon.net> writes:
> > numlist = lookup_table[num]
> > where lookup_table is a precomputed list of lists.
> Ummm ... didn't the OP say he had 32-bit numbers???

He asked about 8 bit numbers.  I saw something about 32-bit numbers
but figured those would be split into bytes or something:  
(untested and I don't remember if this is the byte order wanted):

from itertools import chain
numlist = list(chain(lookup_table[(num>>i)&0xff] for i in xrange(0,32,8)))