[Tutor] Python challenge and decryption

[Prasad, Ramit]

Hi list!
<snip>
 My Python version is 2.7.1 and my OS is Linux Mint 11.

My code is this one:
def decrypt(cypheredText, shiftedCypherNumber):
'''
This function will take two arguments. The first is the cyphered text, the second
is the number of characters we need to shift the text so we can decrypt it.
This is a Caesar cypher. 
'''
crypticText = list(cypheredText)
for letter in crypticText:
asciiValue = ord(letter)
asciiValue += shiftedCypherNumber
newLetter = chr(asciiValue)
print newLetter

This solves the riddle, however some characters are not correctly decyphered  (a is coming back as {...) and prints the solution like this:
r
e
c
o
m
m
<snip>
 - How can I make this "Human readable"? ... Print the letters in just one (or more) lines and maybe replace the " for spaces (This one I suppose it could/should be done with whitespaces() or just making a loop to check and change those for ' '.)

Thanks for your time!
-- 

Joaquim Santos

http://js-vfx.com

linkedin
=============================================

Remove the print in the function.
Add each character to a list (char_list) after
you are have gotten newLetter:
return ''.join( char_list )


def decrypt(cypheredText, shiftedCypherNumber):
'''
This function will take two arguments. The first is the cyphered text, the second
is the number of characters we need to shift the text so we can decrypt it.
This is a Caesar cypher. 
'''
    crypticList = []
    crypticText = list(cypheredText)
    for letter in crypticText:
        asciiValue = ord(letter)
        # Add some range checking / wrapping here
        asciiValue += shiftedCypherNumber
        newLetter = chr(asciiValue)
	 crypticList.append( newLetter )
    return ''.join( crypticList )


Creating a list of the string is unnecessary. 
You can iterate through the string directly.
    for letter in cypheredText:



In order to avoid getting '{', you need to do
some range checking. Since this is based on ASCII
your ranges are:
A-Z = 65-90
a-z = 97-122

When it crosses the end of the range (90 or 122), it
should then come back to the beginning.
That way z wraps to a, and Z to A (for shifting number 
of 1). Alternatively, you can just make the entire 
string upper/lower case and then not deal with multiple cases.
 
Ramit


Ramit Prasad | JPMorgan Chase Investment Bank | Currencies Technology
712 Main Street | Houston, TX 77002
work phone: 713 - 216 - 5423

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