Python is a very powerful interpreted programming language. You can build small scripts or entire applications with it. The great thing about it is that it's free. You can get binary or source code for it and it's been ported to a lot of the major platforms. You can check it out at www.python.org

By being an interpreted language you don't have to worry about typing out a source file, compiling it and then run it to test out an idea you have for an algorithm or to complete a task you might have. You can just type it right in to the interpreter and run in from there which makes it a lot quicker when you need to test your programs.

Some people might say that you can do the same with Pearl. With Python it's all object-oriented which can make your applications much easier to use and exapand from.

Below is my Steganography module that I made. Note that it's saved as a .txt file so you'll have to change it to .py. Steganography is the process of taking a text file and "hiding" it inside an image file without currupting the image file (of course). Right now with Steg.py you can "hide" anything that is in a text format. Either a regular text file or even pickled python objects, as long as they are saved in a file. I know that Sten.py isn't commented to well, sorry about that. I'm working on a newer version were you can store whole applications in an image file and there will be better comments.

As you can see by looking at the two pictures there isn't a difference between the two files and like I stated earlier their size (length x width and number of bytes) are the same.