What do these 2 lines of code actually do?

Ruby
#1

Hello!
I don’t know Ruby but I need to understand how the input value is manipulated in the lines below.
I think that the input is converted to the sum of the values of its characters but the second line is confusing; does it take the final value of the sum and perform the bitwise operations or per iteration? Could you provide a simple explanation of the steps followed?

Thank you in advance!

input.to_s.each_char.inject(0) do |sum, ch|
(sum << 8) ^ (ch.ord) ^ (sum >> 4)

#2 
"100".to_s.each_char.inject(0) { |sum, ch| 
  p [sum,ch.ord] 
 (sum << 8) ^ (ch.ord) ^ (sum >> 4)
}

[0, 49]
[49, 48]
[12595, 48]
=> 3223587

ch.ord is the binary value of a character
^ is exclusive OR ( XOR) between 2 numbers
‘<< 1’ is shifting a (binary) number (mulltiply it by 2)
‘>> 1’ is right shifting a (binary) number (div it by 2)

the value of the last expression of the bloc is the new value of ‘sum’, and the value returned by inject().

sum << 8 is shift of one octet the current ‘sum’ value.
(ch.ord) ^ (sum >> 4) is XOR between number value of curent character XOR current sum divided by 16

"100".to_s.each_char.inject(0) { |sum, ch| 
  newsum= (sum << 8) 
  encoded_byte_value = (ch.ord) ^ (sum >> 4)
 (  newsum ^  encoded_byte_value  )
}

So the result is a bignum wich is a encryption of the string value of ‘imput’ data.
Which encryption ? that is the question :slight_smile:

1 Like
#4

Thanks a lot for the explanation!
It is actually an approach of string hashing.