""" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playfair_cipher#Description The Playfair cipher was developed by Charles Wheatstone in 1854 It's use was heavily promotedby Lord Playfair, hence its name Some features of the Playfair cipher are: 1) It was the first literal diagram substitution cipher 2) It is a manual symmetric encryption technique 3) It is a multiple letter encryption cipher The implementation in the code below encodes alphabets only. It removes spaces, special characters and numbers from the code. Playfair is no longer used by military forces because of known insecurities and of the advent of automated encryption devices. This cipher is regarded as insecure since before World War I. """ import itertools import string from collections.abc import Generator, Iterable def chunker(seq: Iterable[str], size: int) -> Generator[tuple[str, ...], None, None]: it = iter(seq) while True: chunk = tuple(itertools.islice(it, size)) if not chunk: return yield chunk def prepare_input(dirty: str) -> str: """ Prepare the plaintext by up-casing it and separating repeated letters with X's """ dirty = "".join([c.upper() for c in dirty if c in string.ascii_letters]) clean = "" if len(dirty) < 2: return dirty for i in range(len(dirty) - 1): clean += dirty[i] if dirty[i] == dirty[i + 1]: clean += "X" clean += dirty[-1] if len(clean) & 1: clean += "X" return clean def generate_table(key: str) -> list[str]: # I and J are used interchangeably to allow # us to use a 5x5 table (25 letters) alphabet = "ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" # we're using a list instead of a '2d' array because it makes the math # for setting up the table and doing the actual encoding/decoding simpler table = [] # copy key chars into the table if they are in `alphabet` ignoring duplicates for char in key.upper(): if char not in table and char in alphabet: table.append(char) # fill the rest of the table in with the remaining alphabet chars for char in alphabet: if char not in table: table.append(char) return table def encode(plaintext: str, key: str) -> str: """ Encode the given plaintext using the Playfair cipher. Takes the plaintext and the key as input and returns the encoded string. >>> encode("Hello", "MONARCHY") 'CFSUPM' >>> encode("attack on the left flank", "EMERGENCY") 'DQZSBYFSDZFMFNLOHFDRSG' >>> encode("Sorry!", "SPECIAL") 'AVXETX' >>> encode("Number 1", "NUMBER") 'UMBENF' >>> encode("Photosynthesis!", "THE SUN") 'OEMHQHVCHESUKE' """ table = generate_table(key) plaintext = prepare_input(plaintext) ciphertext = "" for char1, char2 in chunker(plaintext, 2): row1, col1 = divmod(table.index(char1), 5) row2, col2 = divmod(table.index(char2), 5) if row1 == row2: ciphertext += table[row1 * 5 + (col1 + 1) % 5] ciphertext += table[row2 * 5 + (col2 + 1) % 5] elif col1 == col2: ciphertext += table[((row1 + 1) % 5) * 5 + col1] ciphertext += table[((row2 + 1) % 5) * 5 + col2] else: # rectangle ciphertext += table[row1 * 5 + col2] ciphertext += table[row2 * 5 + col1] return ciphertext def decode(ciphertext: str, key: str) -> str: """ Decode the input string using the provided key. >>> decode("BMZFAZRZDH", "HAZARD") 'FIREHAZARD' >>> decode("HNBWBPQT", "AUTOMOBILE") 'DRIVINGX' >>> decode("SLYSSAQS", "CASTLE") 'ATXTACKX' """ table = generate_table(key) plaintext = "" for char1, char2 in chunker(ciphertext, 2): row1, col1 = divmod(table.index(char1), 5) row2, col2 = divmod(table.index(char2), 5) if row1 == row2: plaintext += table[row1 * 5 + (col1 - 1) % 5] plaintext += table[row2 * 5 + (col2 - 1) % 5] elif col1 == col2: plaintext += table[((row1 - 1) % 5) * 5 + col1] plaintext += table[((row2 - 1) % 5) * 5 + col2] else: # rectangle plaintext += table[row1 * 5 + col2] plaintext += table[row2 * 5 + col1] return plaintext if __name__ == "__main__": import doctest doctest.testmod() print("Encoded:", encode("BYE AND THANKS", "GREETING")) print("Decoded:", decode("CXRBANRLBALQ", "GREETING"))