learning about hamming distance - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance

hamming_distance.py

str_1 = 'this is a test'
str_2 = 'wokka wokka!!!'

dist = 0
for x,y in zip(str_1, str_2):
     val = ord(x) ^ ord(y)
     while val != 0:
         dist += 1
         val &= val -1

dist == 37 # True

# Bool is a subclass of int, so True == 1 and False == 0
sum(x != y for x,y in zip(str_1,str_2)) == 14 # True
 
# ???
# some data to understand the process
>>> pprint([(bin(ord(x)),bin(ord(y))) for x,y in zip(str_1,str_2)])
[('0b1110100', '0b1110111'),
 ('0b1101000', '0b1101111'),
 ('0b1101001', '0b1101011'),
 ('0b1110011', '0b1101011'),
 ('0b100000', '0b1100001'),
 ('0b1101001', '0b100000'),
 ('0b1110011', '0b1110111'),
 ('0b100000', '0b1101111'),
 ('0b1100001', '0b1101011'),
 ('0b100000', '0b1101011'),
 ('0b1110100', '0b1100001'),
 ('0b1100101', '0b100001'),
 ('0b1110011', '0b100001'),
 ('0b1110100', '0b100001')]
# the diff between each tuple's elements:
>>> pprint([(ord(x) ^ ord(y)) for x,y in zip(str_1,str_2)])
[3, 7, 2, 24, 65, 73, 4, 79, 10, 75, 21, 68, 82, 85]