The Insanity Codec encodes and decodes text using easily defined substitution ciphers.
The name and inspiration come from The Insanity Code, a very silly secret code which was devised by a boy named Odin who I know from my part-time day-job working in a public library.
The original Insanity Code cipher is not included in this package because it is secret. The default cipher simply translates the letters of the alphabet [a-zA-Z] to and from their lowercase ascii codes. However, for testing purposes I have devised the Magenta Ornithopter cipher, which replicates all of the challenges of the original Insanity Code and is included in this package.
It is a simple substitution cipher, but it’s special characteristic is that each letter of the alphabet is replaced by a whole word, or sometimes a phrase consisting of several words.
Encoding is a simple matter, but decoding is made more difficult by the fact that some of the single-word codes may also be part of the multi-word codes. For example, in the Magenta Ornithopter cipher: the code for “j” is “Bill and Ted riding the zebra bareback”… this contains “and” (r), “riding” (p) and “zebra” (v).”
Navigate to the dir containing the package dir, OR put package on python path.
Start the python repl (Python 3 or above) using the -i (interactive option):
python3 -i ic_codec.pyThis will execute the file and then start the repl so that you can type in commands.
The default cipher encodes each letter as it’s ascii code:
encode('hello')
# => '104 101 108 108 111'To use another cipher, pass it as the second argument:
encode('hello', magenta_ornithopter_cipher)
# => 'corn quality control supervisor rumble strip rumble strip corncob'
decode('corn quality control supervisor rumble strip rumble strip corncob', magenta_ornithopter_cipher)
# => 'hello'You can also pass in a settings-string if you like…
… the first part of the settings-string determines whether of not unknown symbols are retained during encoding:
encode('hi!', magenta_ornithopter_cipher, "nnnnnn")
#=> 'corn zoot suit'
encode('hi!', magenta_ornithopter_cipher, "tnnnnn")
#=> 'corn zoot suit !'The encoding and decoding functions both accept an optional settings-string which if given, affects the treatment of unknown symbols.
The settings-string encodes up to six boolean values, which if present, override the default values of the following parameters (in the same order that they are listed).
- encode_retain_unknown
- encode_wrap_unknown
- encode_unwrap_literals
- decode_retain_unknown
- decode_wrap_unknown
- decode_unwrap_literals
The default value for all of these parameters is True. This means that a string can be encoded and decoded whilst retaining spaces and punctuation symbols. During encoding unknown symbols (e.g. space or full-stop) are retained and wrapped in square brackets. Because these symbols are enclosed in square brackets, they are treated as literals by the decoding function and are retained and unwrapped, thus returning the text to exactly the same state as before encoding.
If there are less than six values then the later variables are left unaltered and any additional values after the first six are ignored.
The values of the settings-string are found by examining the string one character at a time. ‘T’ or ‘t’ count as true. ‘N’ or ‘n’ count as false (nil). All other characters are ignored.
Because all characters except for [tTnN] are ignored it means that the settings can be embedded in a longer string if desired - here are some examples to demonstrate:
These three are all equivalent…
"ttnttt" "the tiny tortured artificer" "Troglodytes frantically sacked the great Tree Fort of Weston-super-Mare!"
Square brackets show the positions of the six values in the last example…
"[T]roglody[t]es fra[n][t]ically sacked [t]he grea[t] Tree Fort of Weston-super-Mare!"
These three are also all equivalent…
"nnnnnn" "unknown bananna" "Beginning under John's sub-basement, the fissure extends deep into the centre of the earth."
Square brackets show the positions of the six values in the last example…
"Begi[n][n]i[n]g u[n]der Joh[n]'s sub-baseme[n]t, the fissure extends deep into the centre of the earth."
Literal passages can be included by enclosing them in square brackets although if the setting for …retain_unknown is not True then they will be discarded.
A cipher is defined as a dictionary where the key is the plain-text symbol, and the value is a list of encoded equivalents.
As an example, here is the definition of the Magenta Ornithopter cipher taken from the source code:
magenta_ornithopter_cipher = {
"a" : ["frantic bannana"],
"b" : ["Theodore", "theodore"],
"c" : ["torque wrench"],
"d" : ["underscore"],
"e" : ["quality control supervisor"],
"f" : ["quality control"],
"g" : ["don't"],
"h" : ["corn"],
"i" : ["zoot suit"],
"j" : ["Bill and Ted riding the zebra bareback"],
"k" : ["cream cake"],
"l" : ["rumble strip"],
"m" : ["quincunx"],
"n" : ["dormouse"],
"o" : ["corncob"],
"p" : ["riding"],
"q" : ["mouse"],
"r" : ["and"],
"s" : ["country mouse"],
"t" : ["undermine the fortifications"],
"u" : ["town mouse"],
"v" : ["zebra"],
"w" : ["mortification of the flesh"],
"x" : ["modular"],
"y" : ["fortifications"],
"z" : ["Jeremy Corbyn"]}Encodes [azAZ] as their lower case ascii equivalents i.e. ‘a’ or ‘A’ => ‘97’.
Developed for use in the test suite. Magenta Ornithopter is designed to test all of the potential challenges which come may come up in encoding and decoding with this system.
Features include:
- multi-word character encodings
- multi-word character codes which contain other shorter codes within them
- character encodings with alternative spellings or versions
Experimental cipher still in development, and liable to change in future versions.
This is a cipher where each letter may be encoded as any one of several different words or phrases.
- Python 3 (tested with Python 3.6.8)
Copyright 2019-present B. S. Chambers.
Distributed under GPL, version 3.