Atbash Cipher

Instructions

Create an implementation of the atbash cipher, an ancient encryption system created in the Middle East.

The Atbash cipher is a simple substitution cipher that relies on transposing all the letters in the alphabet such that the resulting alphabet is backwards. The first letter is replaced with the last letter, the second with the second-last, and so on.

An Atbash cipher for the Latin alphabet would be as follows:

Plain:  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Cipher: zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba

It is a very weak cipher because it only has one possible key, and it is a simple mono-alphabetic substitution cipher. However, this may not have been an issue in the cipher's time.

Ciphertext is written out in groups of fixed length, the traditional group size being 5 letters, leaving numbers unchanged, and punctuation is excluded. This is to make it harder to guess things based on word boundaries. All text will be encoded as lowercase letters.

Examples

• Encoding test gives gvhg
• Encoding x123 yes gives c123b vh
• Decoding gvhg gives test
• Decoding gsvjf rxpyi ldmul cqfnk hlevi gsvoz abwlt gives thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog

Running and testing your solutions

From the command line

Simply type make chez if you're using ChezScheme or make guile if you're using GNU Guile. Sometimes the name for the scheme binary on your system will differ from the defaults. When this is the case, you'll need to tell make by running make chez chez=your-chez-binary or make guile guile=your-guile-binary.

From a REPL

• Enter (load "test.scm") at the repl prompt.
• Develop your solution in atbash-cipher.scm reloading as you go.
• Run (test) to check your solution.

Failed Test Cases

If some of the test cases fail, you should see the failing input and the expected output. The failing input is presented as a list because the tests call your solution by (apply atbash-cipher input-list). To learn more about apply see The Scheme Programming Language -- Chapter 5

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Source

Wikipedia