Thank you to all of you !! so finally, I can simply write : <code> #!/usr/bin/env python
def int2binPadded(number, size): """The purpose of this function is to convert integer number to binary number 0-padded.""" if type(number)!=int or number < 0: raise ValueError, "should be a positive integer" if type(size)!=int: raise ValueError, "should be an integer" if number > (2**size)-1: raise ValueError, "number is too large" # convert int to bin return bin(number)[2:].zfill(size) if __name__ == "__main__": import sys print int2binPadded(int(sys.argv[1]),int(sys.argv[2])) </code> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list