JavaExercism/exercises/crypto-square

Crypto Square

Implement the classic method for composing secret messages called a square code.

Given an English text, output the encoded version of that text.

First, the input is normalized: the spaces and punctuation are removed from the English text and the message is downcased.

Then, the normalized characters are broken into rows. These rows can be regarded as forming a rectangle when printed with intervening newlines.

For example, the sentence

If man was meant to stay on the ground, god would have given us roots.

is normalized to:

ifmanwasmeanttostayonthegroundgodwouldhavegivenusroots

The plaintext should be organized in to a rectangle. The size of the rectangle (r x c) should be decided by the length of the message, such that c >= r and c - r <= 1, where c is the number of columns and r is the number of rows.

Our normalized text is 54 characters long, dictating a rectangle with c = 8 and r = 7:

ifmanwas
meanttos
tayonthe
groundgo
dwouldha
vegivenu
sroots

The coded message is obtained by reading down the columns going left to right.

The message above is coded as:

imtgdvsfearwermayoogoanouuiontnnlvtwttddesaohghnsseoau

Output the encoded text in chunks. Phrases that fill perfect rectangles (r X c) should be output c chunks of r length, separated by spaces. Phrases that do not fill perfect rectangles will have n empty spaces. Those spaces should be distributed evenly, added to the end of the last n chunks.

imtgdvs fearwer mayoogo anouuio ntnnlvt wttddes aohghn  sseoau 

Notice that were we to stack these, we could visually decode the cyphertext back in to the original message:

imtgdvs
fearwer
mayoogo
anouuio
ntnnlvt
wttddes
aohghn
sseoau

To run the tests:

$ gradle test

For more detailed info about the Java track see the help page.

Source

J Dalbey's Programming Practice problems http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/103/Projects/ProgrammingPractice.html

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