Positive integer from Python hash() function

Using sys.maxsize:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.maxsize
9223372036854775807L
>>> hash('asdf')
-618826466
>>> hash('asdf') % ((sys.maxsize + 1) * 2)
18446744073090725150L

Alternative using ctypes.c_size_t:

>>> import ctypes
>>> ctypes.c_size_t(hash('asdf')).value
18446744073090725150L

(Edit: at first I thought you always wanted a 32-bit value)

Simply AND it with a mask of the desired size. Generally sys.maxsize will already be such a mask, since it's a power of 2 minus 1.

import sys
assert (sys.maxsize & (sys.maxsize+1)) == 0 # checks that maxsize+1 is a power of 2 

new_hash = hash & sys.maxsize

Just using sys.maxsize is wrong for obvious reasons (it being `2*n-1 and not 2*n), but the fix is easy enough:

h = hash(obj)
h += sys.maxsize + 1

for performance reasons you may want to split the sys.maxsize + 1 into two separate assignments to avoid creating a long integer temporarily for most negative numbers. Although I doubt this is going to matter much

How about:

h = hash(o)
if h < 0:
  h += sys.maxsize

This uses sys.maxsize to be portable between 32- and 64-bit systems.