how to do bitwise exclusive or of two strings in python?

Question

I would like to perform a bitwise exclusive or of two strings in python, but xor of strings are not allowed in python. How can I do it ?

Answer 1

For bytearrays you can directly use XOR:

>>> b1 = bytearray("test123")
>>> b2 = bytearray("321test")
>>> b = bytearray(len(b1))
>>> for i in range(len(b1)):
...   b[i] = b1[i] ^ b2[i]

>>> b
bytearray(b'GWB\x00TAG')