__b58chars = '123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz'
__b58base = len(__b58chars)


def b58encode(v):
    """ encode v, which is a string of bytes, to base58."""

    long_value = 0L
    for (i, c) in enumerate(v[::-1]):
        long_value += (256 ** i) * ord(c)

    result = ''
    while long_value >= __b58base:
        div, mod = divmod(long_value, __b58base)
        result = __b58chars[mod] + result
        long_value = div
    result = __b58chars[long_value] + result

    # Bitcoin does a little leading-zero-compression:
    # leading 0-bytes in the input become leading-1s
    nPad = 0
    for c in v:
        if c == '\0':
            nPad += 1
        else:
            break

    return (__b58chars[0] * nPad) + result


def b58decode(v, length):
    """ decode v into a string of len bytes."""
    long_value = 0L
    for (i, c) in enumerate(v[::-1]):
        long_value += __b58chars.find(c) * (__b58base ** i)

    result = ''
    while long_value >= 256:
        div, mod = divmod(long_value, 256)
        result = chr(mod) + result
        long_value = div
    result = chr(long_value) + result

    nPad = 0
    for c in v:
        if c == __b58chars[0]:
            nPad += 1
        else:
            break

    result = chr(0) * nPad + result
    if length is not None and len(result) != length:
        return None

    return result