Python Caesar Cipher Decoder

Question

In my lesson I was tasked with creating a Caesar Cipher decoder that takes a string of input and finds the best possible string using a letter frequencies. If not sure how m

Answer 1

I'm working on the same tutorial and used a slightly different method. This avoided creating and calling functions:

inp = input()     #to hold code text
code = list(inp)  #store code as a list
soln = []         #store the 'Goodness' for each of 26 possible answers
y=0               #variable to hold total goodness during calculations
clear = []        #will hold decoded text
pos=0             #position marker for a list

#for every possible value of shift
#note range as 0 to 25 are valid shifts and shift 26 = shift 0

for shift in range(0,26):
   for i in code:                  #loop through each letter in code
      if i == " ":                 #spaces have no score so omit them
         continue
      else:                        #if it's a letter
         x = ord(i)-shift          #apply the test shift
         if x < 65:                #prevent shifting outside A-Z range
            x = x + 26             
         x = x - 64                #turn ord into character position in A-Z with A=1
         x = letterGoodness[x-1]   #turn this into the Goodness score
         y = y + x                 #add this to a running total
   soln.insert(shift-1,y)          #AFTER decoding all letters in code, add total(y) to list of scores
   y = 0                           #reset y before next test value

bestSoln=max(soln)                 #find highest possible score

for i in range(0,26):              #check the list of solutions for this score
   if soln[i]==bestSoln:           #the position in this list is the shift we need
       bestShift = i+1             #+1 as the first solution is 0

for i in code:                     #now decode the original text using our best solution
   if i == " ":                    #spaces are not encoded so just add these to the string
      clear.insert(pos," ")        #pos used to track next position for final string
      pos = pos + 1
      continue
   else:
      x = ord(i)-bestShift         #same operation as before
      if x < 65:
         x = x + 26
   z = chr(x)
   clear.insert(pos,z)             #add the decoded letter to the clear text
   pos = pos + 1
print("".join(clear))              #join the list of clear text into one string and print it

Note that many parts of this code could (and should) be compressed, for example

x = x - 64
x = letterGoodness[x-1]
y = y + x

They are left expanded to 'show my working' for a tutorial exercise.

Answer 2

My final solution that works, thanks to the wonderful Cristian Ciupitu.

x = input()
NUM_LETTERS = 26 #Can't import modules I'm using a web based grader/compiler
def SpyCoder(S, N):
   y = ""
   for i in S:
      if(i.isupper()):
         x = ord(i)
         x += N
         if x > ord('Z'):
            x -= NUM_LETTERS
         elif x < ord('A'):
            x += NUM_LETTERS
         y += chr(x)
      else:
         y += " "
   return y

def GoodnessFinder(S):
   y = 0
   for i in S:
      if i.isupper():
         x = ord(i)
         x -= ord('A')
         y += letterGoodness[x]
      else:
         y += 1
   return y

def GoodnessComparer(S):
   goodnesstocompare = GoodnessFinder(S)
   goodness = 0
   v = ''
   best_v = S
   for i in range(0, 26):
     v = SpyCoder(S, i)
     goodness = GoodnessFinder(v)
     if goodness > goodnesstocompare:
         best_v = v
         goodnesstocompare = goodness
   return best_v


print(GoodnessComparer(x))

Thank you for all of your help!

Answer 3

Here is my implementation which works fine.

You should print the goodness of each possible message and see why your program output it.

letterGoodness = dict(zip(string.ascii_uppercase,
                        [.0817,.0149,.0278,.0425,.1270,.0223,.0202,
                         .0609,.0697,.0015,.0077,.0402,.0241,.0675,
                         .0751,.0193,.0009,.0599,.0633,.0906,.0276,
                         .0098,.0236,.0015,.0197,.0007]))

trans_tables = [ str.maketrans(string.ascii_uppercase,
                 string.ascii_uppercase[i:]+string.ascii_uppercase[:i])
                 for i in range(26)]

def goodness(msg):
    return sum(letterGoodness.get(char, 0) for char in msg)

def all_shifts(msg):
    msg = msg.upper()
    for trans_table in trans_tables:
        txt = msg.translate(trans_table)
        yield goodness(txt), txt

print(max(all_shifts(input())))