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Converting integer to a pair of bytes produces unexpected format?

I am using python 3.8.5, and trying to convert from an integer in the range (0,65535) to a pair of bytes. I am currently using the following code:
from struct import pack
input_integer = 2111
bytes_val = voltage.to_bytes(2,'little')
output_data = struct.pack('bb',bytes_val[1],bytes_val[0])
print(output_data)
This produces the following output:
b'\x08?'
This \x08 is 8 in hex, the most significant byte, and ? is 63 in ascii. So together, the numbers add up to 2111 (8*256+63=2111). What I can't figure out is why the least significant byte is coming out in ascii instead of hex? It's very strange to me that it's in a different format than the MSB right next to it. I want it in hex for the output data, and am trying to figure out how to achieve that.
I have also tried modifying the format string in the last line to the following:
output_data = struct.pack('cc',bytes_val[1],bytes_val[0])
which produces the following error:
struct.error: char format requires a bytes object of length 1
I checked the types at each step, and it looks like bytes_val is a bytearray of length 2, but when I take one of the individual elements, say bytes_val[1], it is an integer rather than a byte array.
Any ideas?

All your observations can be verified from the docs for the bytes class:
While bytes literals and representations are based on ASCII text, bytes objects actually behave like immutable sequences of integers
In Python strings any letters and punctuation are represented by themselves in ASCII, while any control codes by their hexadecimal value (0-31, 127). You can see this by printing ''.join(map(chr, range(128))). Bytes literals follow the same convention, except that individual byte elements are integer, i.e., output_data[0].
If you want to represent everything as hex
>>> output_data.hex()
'083f'
>>> bytes.fromhex('083f') # to recover
b'\x08?'
As of version 3.8 bytes.hex() now supports optional sep and bytes_per_sep parameters to insert separators between bytes in the hex output.
>>> b'abcdef'.hex(' ', 2)
'6162 6364 6566'

Hex string convert to ASCII after XOR

I am new to Python & I am trying to learn how to XOR hex encoded ciphertexts against one another & then derive the ASCII value of this.
I have tried some of the functions as outlined in previous posts on this subject - such as bytearray.fromhex, binascii.unhexlify, decode("hex") and they have all generated different errors (obviously due to my lack of understanding). Some of these errors were due to my python version (python 3).
Let me give a simple example, say I have a hex encoded string ciphertext_1 ("4A17") and a hex endoded string ciphertext_2. I want to XOR these two strings and derive their ASCII value. The closest that I have come to a solution is with the following code:
result=hex(int(ciphertext_1, 16) ^ int(ciphertext_2, 16))
print(result)
This prints me a result of: 0xd07
(This is a hex string is my understanding??)
I then try to convert this to its ASCII value. At the moment, I am trying:
binascii.unhexliy(result)
However this gives me an error: "binascii.Error: Odd-length string"
I have tried the different functions as outlined above, as well as trying to solve this specific error (strip function gives another error) - however I have been unsuccessful. I realise my knowledge and understanding of the subject are lacking, so i am hoping someone might be able to advise me?
Full example:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import binascii
ciphertext_1="4A17"
ciphertext_2="4710"
result=hex(int(ciphertext_1, 16) ^ int(ciphertext_2, 16))
print(result)
print(binascii.unhexliy(result))

from binascii import unhexlify
ciphertext_1 = "4A17"
ciphertext_2 = "4710"
xored = (int(ciphertext_1, 16) ^ int(ciphertext_2, 16))
# We format this integer: hex, no leading 0x, uppercase
string = format(xored, 'X')
# We pad it with an initial 0 if the length of the string is odd
if len(string) % 2:
string = '0' + string
# unexlify returns a bytes object, we decode it to obtain a string
print(unhexlify(string).decode())
#
# Not much appears, just a CR followed by a BELL
Or, if you prefer the repr of the string:
print(repr(unhexlify(string).decode()))
# '\r\x07'

When doing byte-wise operations like XOR, it's often easier to work with bytes objects (since the individual bytes are treated as integers). From this question, then, we get:
ciphertext_1 = bytes.fromhex("4A17")
ciphertext_2 = bytes.fromhex("4710")
XORing the bytes can then be accomplished as in this question, with a comprehension. Then you can convert that to a string:
result = [c1 ^ c2 for (c1, c2) in zip(ciphertext_1, ciphertext_2)]
result = ''.join(chr(c) for c in result)
I would probably take a slightly different angle and create a bytes object instead of a list, which can be decoded into your string:
result = bytes(b1 ^ b2 for (b1, b2) in zip(ciphertext_1, ciphertext_2)).decode()

Convert Hexadecimal string to long python

I want to get the value of 99997 in big endian which is (2642804992) and then return the answer as a long value
here is my code in python:
v = 99997
ttm = pack('>i', v) # change the integer to big endian form
print ("%x"), {ttm}
r = long(ttm, 16) # convert to long (ERROR)
return r
Output: %x set(['\x00\x01\x86\x9d'])
Error: invalid literal for long() with base 16: '\x00\x01\x86\x9d'
As the string is already in hex form why isn't it converting to a long? How would I remove this error and what is the solution to this problem.

pack will return a string representation of the data you provide.
The string representation is different than a base 16 of a long number. Notice the \x before each number.
Edit:
try this
ttm = pack('>I',v)
final, = unpack('<I',ttm)
print ttm
Notice the use of I, this so the number is treated as an unsigned value

You have to use struct.unpack as a reverse operation to struct.pack.
r, = unpack('<i', ttm)
this will r set to -1652162304.

You just converted the integer value to big endian binary bytes.
This is useful mostly to embed in messages addressed to big-endian machines (PowerPC, M68K,...)
Converting to long like this means parsing the ttm string which should be 0x1869D as ASCII.
(and the print statement does not work either BTW)
If I just follow your question title: "Convert hexadecimal string to long":
just use long("0x1869D",16). No need to serialize it.
(BTW long only works in python 2. In python 3, you would have to use int since all numbers are represented in the long form)
Well, I'm answering to explain why it's bound to fail, but I'll edit my answer when I really know what you want to do.

This is a nice question.
Here is what you are looking for.
s = str(ttm)
for ch in r"\bx'":
s = s.replace(ch, '')
print(int(s, 16))
The problem is that ttm is similar to a string in some aspects. This is what is looks like: b'\x00\x01\x86\x9d'. Supplying it to int (or long) keeps all the non-hex characters. I removed them and then it worked.
After removing the non-hex-digit chars, you are left with 0001869d which is indeed 99997
Comment I tried it on Python 3. But on Python 2 it will be almost the same, you won't have the b attached to the string, but otherwise it's the same thing.

Python 2,3 Convert Integer to "bytes" Cleanly

The shortest ways I have found are:
n = 5
# Python 2.
s = str(n)
i = int(s)
# Python 3.
s = bytes(str(n), "ascii")
i = int(s)
I am particularly concerned with two factors: readability and portability. The second method, for Python 3, is ugly. However, I think it may be backwards compatible.
Is there a shorter, cleaner way that I have missed? I currently make a lambda expression to fix it with a new function, but maybe that's unnecessary.

Answer 1:
To convert a string to a sequence of bytes in either Python 2 or Python 3, you use the string's encode method. If you don't supply an encoding parameter 'ascii' is used, which will always be good enough for numeric digits.
s = str(n).encode()
Python 2: http://ideone.com/Y05zVY
Python 3: http://ideone.com/XqFyOj
In Python 2 str(n) already produces bytes; the encode will do a double conversion as this string is implicitly converted to Unicode and back again to bytes. It's unnecessary work, but it's harmless and is completely compatible with Python 3.
Answer 2:
Above is the answer to the question that was actually asked, which was to produce a string of ASCII bytes in human-readable form. But since people keep coming here trying to get the answer to a different question, I'll answer that question too. If you want to convert 10 to b'10' use the answer above, but if you want to convert 10 to b'\x0a\x00\x00\x00' then keep reading.
The struct module was specifically provided for converting between various types and their binary representation as a sequence of bytes. The conversion from a type to bytes is done with struct.pack. There's a format parameter fmt that determines which conversion it should perform. For a 4-byte integer, that would be i for signed numbers or I for unsigned numbers. For more possibilities see the format character table, and see the byte order, size, and alignment table for options when the output is more than a single byte.
import struct
s = struct.pack('<i', 5) # b'\x05\x00\x00\x00'

You can use the struct's pack:
In [11]: struct.pack(">I", 1)
Out[11]: '\x00\x00\x00\x01'
The ">" is the byte-order (big-endian) and the "I" is the format character. So you can be specific if you want to do something else:
In [12]: struct.pack("<H", 1)
Out[12]: '\x01\x00'
In [13]: struct.pack("B", 1)
Out[13]: '\x01'
This works the same on both python 2 and python 3.
Note: the inverse operation (bytes to int) can be done with unpack.

I have found the only reliable, portable method to be
bytes(bytearray([n]))
Just bytes([n]) does not work in python 2. Taking the scenic route through bytearray seems like the only reasonable solution.

Converting an int to a byte in Python 3:
n = 5
bytes( [n] )
>>> b'\x05'
;) guess that'll be better than messing around with strings
source: http://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#binaryseq

In Python 3.x, you can convert an integer value (including large ones, which the other answers don't allow for) into a series of bytes like this:
import math
x = 0x1234
number_of_bytes = int(math.ceil(x.bit_length() / 8))
x_bytes = x.to_bytes(number_of_bytes, byteorder='big')
x_int = int.from_bytes(x_bytes, byteorder='big')
x == x_int

from int to byte:
bytes_string = int_v.to_bytes( lenth, endian )
where the lenth is 1/2/3/4...., and endian could be 'big' or 'little'
form bytes to int:
data_list = list( bytes );

When converting from old code from python 2 you often have "%s" % number this can be converted to b"%d" % number (b"%s" % number does not work) for python 3.
The format b"%d" % number is in addition another clean way to convert int to a binary string.
b"%d" % number

Convert decimal int to little endian string ('\x##\x##...')

I want to convert an integer value to a string of hex values, in little endian. For example, 5707435436569584000 would become '\x4a\xe2\x34\x4f\x4a\xe2\x34\x4f'.
All my googlefu is finding for me is hex(..) which gives me '0x4f34e24a4f34e180' which is not what I want.
I could probably manually split up that string and build the one I want but I'm hoping somone can point me to a better option.

You need to use the struct module:
>>> import struct
>>> struct.pack('<Q', 5707435436569584000)
'\x80\xe14OJ\xe24O'
>>> struct.pack('<Q', 5707435436569584202)
'J\xe24OJ\xe24O'
Here < indicates little-endian, and Q that we want to pack a unsigned long long (8 bytes).
Note that Python will use ASCII characters for any byte that falls within the printable ASCII range to represent the resulting bytestring, hence the 14OJ, 24O and J parts of the above result:
>>> struct.pack('<Q', 5707435436569584202).encode('hex')
'4ae2344f4ae2344f'
>>> '\x4a\xe2\x34\x4f\x4a\xe2\x34\x4f'
'J\xe24OJ\xe24O'

I know it is an old thread, but it is still useful. Here my two cents using python3:
hex_string = hex(5707435436569584202) # '0x4f34e24a4f34e180' as you said
bytearray.fromhex(hex_string[2:]).reverse()
So, the key is convert it to a bytearray and reverse it.
In one line:
bytearray.fromhex(hex(5707435436569584202)[2:])[::-1] # bytearray(b'J\xe24OJ\xe24O')
PS: You can treat "bytearray" data like "bytes" and even mix them with b'raw bytes'
Update:
As Will points in coments, you can also manage negative integers:
To make this work with negative integers you need to mask your input with your preferred int type output length. For example, -16 as a little endian uint32_t would be bytearray.fromhex(hex(-16 & (2**32-1))[2:])[::-1], which evaluates to bytearray(b'\xf0\xff\xff\xff')