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

If the strings are not even of equal length, you can use this

def strxor(a, b):     # xor two strings of different lengths
    if len(a) > len(b):
        return "".join([chr(ord(x) ^ ord(y)) for (x, y) in zip(a[:len(b)], b)])
    else:
        return "".join([chr(ord(x) ^ ord(y)) for (x, y) in zip(a, b[:len(a)])])