Caesar’s cipher
In cryptography, the original message is called the plaintext and the encrypted
message is called the ciphertext.
One of the oldest and simplest ways to encrypt a message is to use a method called
Caesar’s cipher, where each letter in the message is replaced by the one that comes
k positions after it in the alphabet. It is known as k because it is a key ( you need to
know k to ‘unlock’ the message and decrypt it).
Non-letter characters (spaces, numbers, symbols, etc.) can simply be copied over from
the plaintext to the ciphertext.
Example encryption: simple version
plaintext i l o v e c o m p u t i n g
key = +2 ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
ciphertext k n q x g e q o r w v k p i
This is easier if you also write down the position of each letter in the alphabet. Moving k
letters down the alphabet is the same as adding the number k to a letter’s position.
Example encryption: with the positions of the letters in the alphabet
plaintext i l o v e c o m p u t i n g
positions 9 12 15 22 5 3 15 13 16 21 20 9 14 7
key = +2 ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
positions 11 14 17 24 7 5 17 15 18 23 22 11 16 9
ciphertext k n q x g e q o r w v k p i
However, what happens when moving k letters down the alphabet takes you past the
end of the alphabet? In that case, you can circle right back to the beginning of the
alphabet, as you can see in the example below:
Example encryption: some letters have been ‘shifted’ past the end of the alphabet
plaintext i l o v e c o m p u t i n g
positions 9 12 15 22 5 3 15 13 16 21 20 9 14 7
key = +10 ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
32 31 30
positions 19 22 25 6 15 13 25 23 26 5 4 19 24 17
ciphertext s v y f o m y w z e d s x q
Task .
Create a Python program that prompts the user to enter the plaintext (the original
message) and the key (the number of positions to shift letters by), and displays the
ciphertext (the encrypted message).
Example
Note: Use this example to check your program. This is the output your program should produce for the
given input.
The program displays a prompt Enter the plaintext:
and waits for keyboard input
The user types in the original i love computing
message
The program displays a prompt Enter the key:
and waits for keyboard input
The user types in the number of 2
positions to shift by
The program displays the k nqxg eqorwvkpi
encrypted message
Example
Note: Use this example to check your program. This is the output your program should produce for the
given input.
The program displays a prompt Enter the plaintext:
and waits for keyboard input
i love computing
The user types in the original
message
The program displays a prompt Enter the key:
and waits for keyboard input
The user types in the number of 10
positions to shift by
The program displays the s vyfo mywzedsxq
encrypted message
Note: For the purposes of this task, you can assume that only lower case letters need
to be encrypted.
Start with this checklist for your program:
Checklist: Tick (✔) the corresponding box if your program:
Prompts the user for a single character to be encrypted (you can assume
that only lower case letters need to be encrypted).
Prompts the user for the key, i.e. the number of positions that this character
needs to be shifted by (you can assume that this is positive).
Computes and displays the encrypted character, i.e. the letter that comes
key positions after it in the alphabet (use the examples provided to test your
program).
Works correctly even for letters that the method circles back to the beginning
of the alphabet (use the examples provided to test your program).
Now, extend your program to meet the criteria in the checklist below:
Checklist: Tick (✔) the corresponding box if your program:
Prompts the user for the plaintext, i.e. the message to be encrypted (you can
assume that only lower case letters need to be encrypted).
Prompts the user for the key, i..e. the number of positions that each letter
needs to be shifted by (you can assume that this is positive).
Computes and displays the ciphertext, where each letter of the original
message has been replaced by the letter that comes key positions after it in
the alphabet (use the examples provided to test your program).
Works correctly even for letters that the method circles back to the beginning
of the alphabet (use the examples provided to test your program).
Explorer task . Decryption
Extend your program to perform the reverse operation, i.e. decryption. Start with the
ciphertext and a key, and produce the corresponding plaintext.
Clues . Look here if you need help
What are the variables I will need?
Think about the quantities you will need to refer to in your program, i.e. the values that
your program will need to keep track of.
You will probably need:
● The key and the plaintext entered by the user
● Each individual character in the plaintext
● The ciphertext produced by the program
You will need additional variables as well, that you will find in the code that follows (e.g.
letters, position, and cipherlist).
How do I iterate over the characters in the plaintext?
Read the plaintext as a piece of text. Use a for-loop to iterate over each character
in the plaintext. The pseudocode below illustrates the idea:
for character in plaintext:
process the character
How can I know the position of a letter in the alphabet?
Start with this string of letters in the beginning of your program:
letters = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
This is essentially the alphabet. For any given character, as long as it belongs to these
letters, you can get its numerical position in the alphabet using this code:
position = letters.index(character)
So, to give a couple of examples, position would be 0 for 'a' and 10 for 'k'.
Note: This code will result in a ValueError if the character is not a letter. So, make sure
your program only executes this code when it is appropriate.
How can I find the letter that comes after k positions in the alphabet?
If you know the numerical position of a letter in the alphabet, you can add the key to
this position and retrieve the corresponding character back from the letters. You
will need to figure out what to do when adding the key to the position results in a new
position that’s greater than 25.
What do I do with the characters in the ciphertext
For each character in the plaintext, your program will produce the corresponding
ciphertext character. Collect all these characters into a list, say cipherlist. Don’t
forget to initialise the cipherlist.
At the end of your program, use the code below to join all the characters you have
collected in cipherlist into a single ciphertext string:
ciphertext = "".join(cipherlist)
