I'm using a 64 bit system, but the issue is as well repeatable on 32 bit systems: 

kostja@shmita:~$ python
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Apr 16 2010, 13:57:41) 
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 0xffffffffffffffff
18446744073709551615L
>>> [0xffffffffffffffff]
[18446744073709551615L]
>>> str(0xffffffffffffffff)
'18446744073709551615'
>>> str([0xffffffffffffffff])
'[18446744073709551615L]'

Notice the 'L' specifier disappears when creating a string from an integer. I.e. depending on conversion order, 'L' specifier is present or absent in the resulting string representation.

I don't know the reason why 'L' specifier is necessary at all when printing integers, rather, I'd say it's very harmful, because makes Python program platform-dependent (since int is mapped to C long, 32-bit systems print 'L' where 64-bit systems don't), but please at least make the output consistent!

Thanks,
-- 
kostja

There is no suffix in python 3.x. Since this is a feature request, and there will be no new releases of 2.x, I'm closing this.

Python objects can have two textual representations: see the difference between str() and repr():
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/inputoutput.html
And indeed, Python3 chose to drop the 'L' suffix.