read text file byte by byte

[Nobody]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:14:11 +0000, MRAB wrote:

>>> 	You originally stated that you want to "scramble" the bytes -- if
>>> you mean to implement some sort of encryption algorithm you should know
>>> that most of them work in blocks as the "key" is longer than one byte.
>> 
>> Block ciphers work in blocks. Stream ciphers work on bytes, regardless of
>> the length of the key.
>> 
> It's still more efficient to read in blocks, even if you're going to
> process the bytes one at a time.

That's fine for a file. If you're reading from a pipe, socket, etc, you
typically want to take what you can get when you can get it (although this
is easier said than done in Python), rather than waiting for a complete
"block". This is often a primary reason for choosing a stream cipher over
a block cipher, as it eliminates the need to add and remove padding for
intermittent data flows.