Our internal base conversion algorithms between power-of-2 and non-power-of-2 bases are quadratic time, and that's been annoying forever ;-) This applies to int<->str and int<->decimal.Decimal conversions. Sometimes the conversion is implicit, like when comparing an int to a Decimal.

For example:

>>> a = 1 << 1000000000 # yup! a billion and one bits
>>> s = str(a)

I gave up after waiting for over 8 hours, and the computation apparently can't be interrupted.

In contrast, using the function in the attached todecstr.py gets the result in under a minute:

>>> a = 1 << 1000000000
>>> s = todecstr(a)
>>> len(s)
301029996

That builds an equal decimal.Decimal in a "clever" recursive way, and then just applies str to _that_.

That's actually a best case for the function, which gets major benefit from the mountains of trailing 0 bits. A worst case is all 1-bits, but that still finishes in under 5 minutes:

>>> a = 1 << 1000000000
>>> s2 = todecstr(a - 1)
>>> len(s2)
301029996
>>> s[-10:], s2[-10:]
('1787109376', '1787109375')

A similar kind of function could certainly be written to convert from Decimal to int much faster, but it would probably be less effective. These things avoid explicit division entirely, but fat multiplies are key, and Decimal implements a fancier * algorithm than Karatsuba.

Not for the faint of heart ;-)