PyCrypto Experience

Let me start with a wow. PyCrypto is very nice. Let me emphasize the add-ons that go with PyCrypto. These are as valuable as the package itself. Here's the story. I was working with a Java-based AES encrypter that used the "PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1" key generator algorithm. This was part of a …

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Some Basic Statistics

I've always been fascinated by the essential statistical algorithms. While there are numerous statistical libraries, the simple measures of central tendency (mean, media, mode, standard deviation) have some interesting features.
Well. Interesting to me.
First, some basics.
def s0( samples ):
    return len(samples) # sum(x**0 for x in samples …
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Package Deal for Learning Python

If you're very new to programming in general, Python's a great place to start.
There are many, many tutorials. I won't even try to summarize them. They're generally good. And the more you read, the more you learn.
Moving past the n00bz needs, there are some more advanced books. Here's …
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Stingray 4.4 Update -- the Posix split command applied to COBOL files

Here's an interesting problem. Implement the split command for mainframe COBOL EBCDIC files with their BDW and RDW headers.

The conventional split can't handle COBOL EBCDIC files because they don't have sensible \n line breaks. Translating an EBCDIC file to ASCII is high-risk because COMP and COMP-3 fields will be …

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