Harlin Seritt wrote: > Hi... > > I would like to take a string like 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocius' > and write it to a file in binary forms -- this way a user cannot read > the string in case they were try to open in something like ascii text > editor. I'd also like to be able to read the binary formed data back > into string format so that it shows the original value. Is there any > way to do this in Python? > > Thanks! > > Harlin > I promise you that everything written to a file is done in binary. Computers don't know how to work with anything BUT binary. I think what you want to do is to encrypt/obstifucate the string. For that you will need to encrypt the string, write it out, read it back in, and decrypt it. If you want it to be REALLY strong use pyCrypto and something like AES-256.
http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto If you just want to make it somewhat hard for someone to decypher you can do something like below (sorry I can't remember where I found this to attribute to someone): import random import zlib import time def tinycode(key, text, reverse=False): rand = random.Random(key).randrange if not reverse: text = zlib.compress(text) text = ''.join([chr(ord(elem)^rand(256)) for elem in text]) if reverse: text = zlib.decompress(text) return text def strToHex(aString): hexlist = ["%02X" % ord(x) for x in aString] return ''.join(hexlist) def HexTostr(hString): res = "" for i in range(len(hString)/2): realIdx = i*2 res = res + chr(int(hString[realIdx:realIdx+2],16)) return res if __name__ == "__main__": keyStr = "This is a key" #testStr = "which witch had which witches wrist watch abc def ghi" testStr=time.strftime("%Y%m%d", time.localtime()) print "String:", testStr etestStr = tinycode(keyStr, testStr) print "Encrypted string:", etestStr hex=strToHex(etestStr) print "Hex : ", hex print "Len(hex):", len(hex) nonhex=HexTostr(hex) #testStr = tinycode(keyStr, etestStr, reverse=True) testStr = tinycode(keyStr, nonhex, reverse=True) print "Decrypted string:", testStr WARNING: THIS IS NOT A STRONG ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM. It is just a nuisance for someone that really wants to decrypt the string. But it might work for your application. -Larry -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
