created on 18 May 2008, by Syndication, read more…
Reading the "Stars and Stripes" newspaper today, I ran across the popularly syndicated JUMBLE puzzle, which is a scrambled word game. Interestingly enough, the versatile UNIX tr command came to mind again. By providing a jumbled alphabet key, the UNIX tr command can perform an elementary encryption operation. Here is a simple example.
To "encrypt" the contents of mysysad.txt in uppercase. # sh # cat mysysad.txt | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]' | tr '[A-Z]' "PETRUSCMANFXZJOIVKBGWHDYLQ" > mysys.txt
# more mysys.txt GMU GKPJBXPGU WGAXAGL IKOHARUB HUKBPGAXGL DAGMAJ WJAY.
To "decrypt" the contents of mysys.txt in lowercase (original state) # cat mysys.txt | tr "PETRUSCMANFXZJOIVKBGWHDYLQ" '[a-z]'
Or use the echo command per Denis' (commenter) suggestion # echo "GMU GKPJBXPGU WGAXAGL IKOHARUB HUKBPGAXGL DAGMAJ WJAY." | tr 'PETRUSCMANFXZJOIVKBGWHDYLQ' '[a-z]'