Cryptoclans

Cryptoclans rock.

This Perl script takes as input a pipe-delimited file where:

• each line is a puzzle
• the first field is the topic
• each additional field is an item

Try it with family member names, favorite meals, old pets, whatever.  Note that a character might be the same in plaintext and ciphertext.  I may change that later.

Download  cryptoclans.txt

#!/usr/bin/perl -T

# Copyright (c) 2010 Jason Filley jason@snakelegs.org
#
# Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
# purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
# copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
# WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
# MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
# ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
# WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
# ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
# OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
#
# Purpose: create cryptoclans
# Usage:  create a pipe-delimited file with the first field being the topic,
#	and each additional field is the item.
# cat yourfile.txt | cryptoclans.txt
#
# Example:
# Pets|dog|cat|fish|parakeet|lemur|skunk|guinea pig|iguana
# Car Make|Ford|Dodge|Chrysler|Toyota|Honda|Hyundai|Jeep
# Dog Breeds|Sheltie|Boxer|German Shepherd|Poodle|Rottweiler|Australian Terrier|Whippet

use List::Util 'shuffle';

my $AllowedLetters     = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
my $AllowedPunctuation = " \"'-";
my @bigkey             = ();

while (<STDIN>) {

    my @line = split( '\|', $_ );
    $topic = shift(@line);

    # Create ciphertext alphabet
    @ciphertext = split '', $AllowedLetters;
    @ciphertext = shuffle(@ciphertext);
    my $cipher = join '', @ciphertext;
    my @outlist = ();

    print "$topic\n";
    print( "-" x length($topic) );
    print "\n";

    foreach $item (@line) {
        $item = uc($item);
        chomp $item;

        $output = "";

        foreach my $byte ( split //, $item ) {

            if ( $AllowedPunctuation =~ /$byte/ ) {
                $output .= $byte;
            }
            elsif ( $AllowedLetters =~ /$byte/ ) {

                #find its index in the plaintext array
                $index = index( $AllowedLetters, $byte );

                #find the ciphertext character with the same index
                $char = substr( $cipher, $index, 1 );
                $output .= $char;
            }
            else {
                die "Bad character in input!\n";
            }
        }

        push @outlist, "$output";
    }

    print map { "$_ \n" } @outlist;
    print "\n\n";
}