Hamming distance between two binary strings not working
Implement it:
def hamming2(s1, s2):
"""Calculate the Hamming distance between two bit strings"""
assert len(s1) == len(s2)
return sum(c1 != c2 for c1, c2 in zip(s1, s2))
And test it:
assert hamming2("1010", "1111") == 2
assert hamming2("1111", "0000") == 4
assert hamming2("1111", "1111") == 0
If we are to stick with the original algorithm, we need to convert the strings to integers to be able to use the bitwise operators.
def hamming2(x_str, y_str):
"""Calculate the Hamming distance between two bit strings"""
assert len(x_str) == len(y_str)
x, y = int(x_str, 2), int(y_str, 2) # '2' specifies we are reading a binary number
count, z = 0, x ^ y
while z:
count += 1
z &= z - 1 # magic!
return count
Then we can call it as follows:
print(hamming2('100010', '101000'))
While this algorithm is cool as a novelty, having to convert to a string likely negates any speed advantage it might have. The answer @dlask posted is much more succinct.
This is what I use to calculate the Hamming distance.
It counts the # of differences between equal length strings.
def hamdist(str1, str2):
diffs = 0
for ch1, ch2 in zip(str1, str2):
if ch1 != ch2:
diffs += 1
return diffs