“To Err is Human…” so goes the old truism, but luckily computers can often help in error correction. As anyone who has typed a long sequence of numbers (such as a credit card number) knows, it is extremely easy to make a mistake while typing. Common errors include typing the wrong number, switching two numbers, forgetting a number, and inserting an extra number.

Encryption with a one-time pad is an extremely simple cryptographic method for hiding information. It involves the creation of a random key the size of the text to be encrypted and the modular addition of the two. I just finished up coding an application which offers some simple functions which make the implementation of a one-time pad somewhat simpler. Below is some information about one-time pads and the program.

As usual, a few unanticipated bugs showed up while I was testing the maze solver. The first one involved incomplete solutions being generated because the solver would move across a “junction piece” (a piece with three or more adjacent open squares) which had already been tagged as traveled. This disrupted the way the solver worked, leading to solutions with large chunks of the path missing. The solution to the problem is to make the solver turn back when it encounters a used junction piece instead of moving forward.