Crate entropy 

Entropy

A Rust library for calculating Shannon entropy of byte sequences.

Overview

Shannon entropy measures the average amount of information (in bits) contained in a message. It’s commonly used in:

• Cryptography (measuring randomness)
• Data compression (estimating compressibility)
• Malware analysis (detecting packed/encrypted content)
• Password strength estimation

Quick Start

use entropy::shannon_entropy;

// Calculate Shannon entropy (bits)
let h = shannon_entropy("hello, world");
assert_eq!(h, 3.0220551);

Interpreting Results

• Shannon entropy ranges from 0 to 8 bits for byte data
  • 0 = completely uniform (e.g., “aaaa”)
  • 8 = maximum entropy (all 256 byte values equally distributed)

Functions

metric_entropy

shannon_entropy

Calculates the Shannon entropy of a byte sequence.