Write a program that, given an English text, outputs the encoded version of that text.
First, the input is normalized: the spaces and punctuation are removed from the English text and the message is downcased.
Then, the normalized characters are broken into rows. These rows can be regarded as forming a rectangle when printed with intervening newlines.
For example, the sentence
If man was meant to stay on the ground, god would have given us roots.
is normalized to:
ifmanwasmeanttostayonthegroundgodwouldhavegivenusroots
The plaintext should be organized in to a rectangle. The size of the
rectangle (r x c
) should be decided by the length of the message,
such that c >= r
and c - r <= 1
, where c
is the number of columns
and r
is the number of rows.
Our normalized text is 54 characters long, dictating a rectangle with
c = 8
and r = 7
:
ifmanwas
meanttos
tayonthe
groundgo
dwouldha
vegivenu
sroots
The coded message is obtained by reading down the columns going left to right.
The message above is coded as:
imtgdvsfearwermayoogoanouuiontnnlvtwttddesaohghnsseoau
Output the encoded text in chunks. Phrases that fill perfect squares
(r X r)
should be output in r
-length chunks separated by spaces.
Imperfect squares will have n
empty spaces. Those spaces should be distributed evenly across the last n
rows.
imtgdvs fearwer mayoogo anouuio ntnnlvt wttddes aohghn sseoau
Notice that were we to stack these, we could visually decode the cyphertext back in to the original message:
imtgdvs
fearwer
mayoogo
anouuio
ntnnlvt
wttddes
aohghn
sseoau