reedsolo 1.4.9

Basic usage with high-level RSCodec class

# Initialization
>>> from reedsolo import RSCodec
>>> rsc = RSCodec(10)  # 10 ecc symbols

# Encoding
>>> rsc.encode([1,2,3,4])
b'\x01\x02\x03\x04,\x9d\x1c+=\xf8h\xfa\x98M'
>>> rsc.encode(bytearray([1,2,3,4]))
bytearray(b'\x01\x02\x03\x04,\x9d\x1c+=\xf8h\xfa\x98M')
>>> rsc.encode(b'hello world')
b'hello world\xed%T\xc4\xfd\xfd\x89\xf3\xa8\xaa'
# Note that chunking is supported transparently to encode any string length.

# Decoding (repairing)
>>> rsc.decode(b'hello world\xed%T\xc4\xfd\xfd\x89\xf3\xa8\xaa')[0]
b'hello world'
>>> rsc.decode(b'heXlo worXd\xed%T\xc4\xfdX\x89\xf3\xa8\xaa')[0]     # 3 errors
b'hello world'
>>> rsc.decode(b'hXXXo worXd\xed%T\xc4\xfdX\x89\xf3\xa8\xaa')[0]     # 5 errors
b'hello world'
>>> rsc.decode(b'hXXXo worXd\xed%T\xc4\xfdXX\xf3\xa8\xaa')[0]        # 6 errors - fail
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
reedsolo.ReedSolomonError: Too many (or few) errors found by Chien Search for the errata locator polynomial!

>>> rsc = RSCodec(12)  # using 2 more ecc symbols (to correct max 6 errors or 12 erasures)
>>> rsc.encode(b'hello world')
b'hello world?Ay\xb2\xbc\xdc\x01q\xb9\xe3\xe2='
>>> rsc.decode(b'hello worXXXXy\xb2XX\x01q\xb9\xe3\xe2=')[0]         # 6 errors - ok, but any more would fail
b'hello world'
>>> rsc.decode(b'helXXXXXXXXXXy\xb2XX\x01q\xb9\xe3\xe2=', erase_pos=[3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16])[0]  # 12 erasures - OK
b'hello world'

Note: this shows that we can decode twice as many erasures (where we provide the location of errors ourselves) than errors (with unknown locations). This is the cost of error correction compared to erasure correction.

# Checking
>> rsc.check(b'hello worXXXXy\xb2XX\x01q\xb9\xe3\xe2=')  # Tampered message will return False
[False]
>> rmes, rmesecc, errata_pos = rsc.decode(b'hello worXXXXy\xb2XX\x01q\xb9\xe3\xe2=')
>> rsc.check(rmesecc)  # Corrected message will return True
[True]
>> print('Number of detected errors and erasures: %i, their positions: %s' % (len(errata_pos), list(errata_pos)))
Number of detected errors and erasures: 6, their positions: [16, 15, 12, 11, 10, 9]

# To use longer chunks or bigger values than 255 (may be very slow)
>> rsc = RSCodec(12, nsize=4095)  # always use a power of 2 minus 1
>> rsc = RSCodec(12, c_exp=12)  # alternative way to set nsize=4095
>> mes = 'a' * (4095-12)
>> mesecc = rsc.encode(mes)
>> mesecc[2] = 1
>> mesecc[-1] = 1
>> rmes, rmesecc, errata_pos = rsc.decode(mesecc)
>> rsc.check(mesecc)
[False]
>> rsc.check(rmesecc)
[True]

Low-level usage via direct access to math functions

If you want full control, you can skip the API and directly use the library as-is. Here’s how:

First you need to init the precomputed tables:

>> import reedsolo as rs
>> rs.init_tables(0x11d)

Pro tip: if you get the error: ValueError: byte must be in range(0, 256), please check that your prime polynomial is correct for your field. Pro tip2: by default, you can only encode messages of max length and max symbol value = 256. If you want to encode bigger messages, please use the following (where c_exp is the exponent of your Galois Field, eg, 12 = max length 2^12 = 4096):

>> prim = rs.find_prime_polys(c_exp=12, fast_primes=True, single=True)
>> rs.init_tables(c_exp=12, prim=prim)

Let’s define our RS message and ecc size:

>> n = 255  # length of total message+ecc
>> nsym = 12  # length of ecc
>> mes = "a" * (n-nsym)  # generate a sample message

To optimize, you can precompute the generator polynomial:

>> gen = rs.rs_generator_poly_all(n)

Then to encode:

>> mesecc = rs.rs_encode_msg(mes, nsym, gen=gen[nsym])

Let’s tamper our message:

>> mesecc[1] = 0

To decode:

>> rmes, recc, errata_pos = rs.rs_correct_msg(mesecc, nsym, erase_pos=erase_pos)

Note that both the message and the ecc are corrected (if possible of course). Pro tip: if you know a few erasures positions, you can specify them in a list erase_pos to double the repair power. But you can also just specify an empty list.

You can check how many errors and/or erasures were corrected, which can be useful to design adaptive bitrate algorithms:

>> print('A total of %i errata were corrected over all chunks of this message.' % len(errata_pos))

If the decoding fails, it will normally automatically check and raise a ReedSolomonError exception that you can handle. However if you want to manually check if the repaired message is correct, you can do so:

>> rs.rs_check(rmes + recc, nsym)

Note: if you want to use multiple reedsolomon with different parameters, you need to backup the globals and restore them before calling reedsolo functions:

>> rs.init_tables()
>> global gf_log, gf_exp, field_charac
>> bak_gf_log, bak_gf_exp, bak_field_charac = gf_log, gf_exp, field_charac

Then at anytime, you can do:

>> global gf_log, gf_exp, field_charac
>> gf_log, gf_exp, field_charac = bak_gf_log, bak_gf_exp, bak_field_charac
>> mesecc = rs.rs_encode_msg(mes, nsym)
>> rmes, recc, errata_pos = rs.rs_correct_msg(mesecc, nsym)

The globals backup is not necessary if you use RSCodec, it will be automatically managed.

Read the sourcecode’s comments for more info about how it works, and for the various parameters you can setup if you need to interface with other RS codecs.