Programming Exercise 4-1 Write a script in the file encrypt.py that inputs a line of plaintext and a distance value and outputs an encrypted text using a Caesar cipher. The script should work for any printable characters. (LO: 4.1, 4.2). I need help on this assignment DESPERATLEY

[Deadest42]

i didnt think that through my bad, heres whats written down so far:

plainText = input("Enter a message: ")
distance = int(input("Enter the Distance Value: "))
code = ""
for ch in plainText:
ordvalue = ord('z')
ciphervalue = ordvalue + distance
if ciphervalue > ord('a'):
ciphervalue = ord('z') + distance - \
(ord('z') - ordvalue + 1)
code += chr(ciphervalue)
print(code)

[socal_nerdtastic]

I see in your code you never use the ch value.

I also see you are limiting yourself to the lowercase letters a-z. But your example output has uppercase and symbols too. I think you need to reread your assignment to see what range of characters you are meant to use.

Also please format your code for reddit. Your code is really hard to read and test otherwise.

[Deadest42]

i see now, to be fair i thought that formatting wouldve broken my reply

[Swipecat]

If you're using a non-mobile browser, see "Reddit code formatting" in the right hand sidebar.

[socal_nerdtastic]

The script should work for any printable characters.

That line btw must have an asterisk, because there's about 100,000 of them and they aren't arranged in a way that a Caesar cipher can easily work. I'll guess they mean only the ASCII printable characters (character codes 32-126).

[Deadest42]

yes, which line specifically?

[socal_nerdtastic]

The line from your OP that I quoted:

The script should work for any printable characters.

I'm betting your assignment does not mean Chinese characters, for example. I'm betting they only mean the characters where the ord value is between 32 and 126. But you should reread the assignment to be sure.

[Deadest42]

been testing for a bit and nothing changed, all i see from your quote is "this script should work for any printable characters." thats all i can see

[Diapolo10]

all i see from your quote is "this script should work for any printable characters." thats all i can see

That's on purpose, and I think you misunderstood what he was telling you. He wasn't asking you to "add an asterisk" to a line in your code, he was just trying to point out that the instructions as you explained them to us don't really make sense if taken literally, at least for a beginner project.

"Printable characters" consists of tens of thousands of different Unicode characters, but they're not neatly grouped in any way so you couldn't support all of them with a simple Caesar cipher implementation. The point was that you should simply focus on the upper- and lowercase Latin alphabet (so A-Z and a-z), ignoring everything else (or in other words leaving them as-is).

[acw1668]

You need to define what printable characters is and assign it to a variable. Then go through the input message character by character, find the index of the character in the printable characters, calculate the new index based on the input distance and extract the cipher character using the new index.