Johannes Bauer wrote: > > padding > Why would a 16 byte block need to be padded by one byte to 17 bytes?
If you see an arbitary block of 16 bytes data it's hard to tell immediately whether the last byte is a padding element that should be removed or part of the content. That is why padding is _always_ added (rounded up to the next blocksize) - and the encrypted content is always at least one byte longer than the plain text version. The padding is chosen such that it is immedidately clear how much padding was just by looking just at the final byte. If you do not need this, because you already know how long the data is, you can use the -nopad option. Johan
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