COMP 122 Lab
7 Lab Report and Source Code
COMP122
Week 7 iLab
The focus of this lab is on using strings. You will have an
opportunity to work with both C style strings and the string data type. This
lab also gives you an opportunity to use what you have learned previously,
including using functions, array processing, repetition, and selection. You
will also have an opportunity to work with file input and output.
You are to design and implement a program which does encryption
and decryption of data from files. Encryption is the process of taking plain
lines of text and performing some algorithmic transformation on the data to
create an encrypted line of text which looks nothing like the original.
Decryption is the process of taking an encrypted line of text and performing
some algorithmic transformation on the data to recover the original line of
plain text.
Encryption and Decryption Approach
Our approach to encryption and decryption involves two strings.
The first is an encryption / decryption string which we will allow to be up to
128 lower case alphabetical characters in length. The second string is a line
of text from a file that is to be encrypted or decrypted.
Our basic strategy for encrypting data is based on mapping
alphabetical characters to specific values, then doing some simple mathematical
operations to create a new value. First of all, every character in either the
encryption string or the input string is mapped to a number between 0 and 25
based on its position in the alphabet.
= 0
= 1
= 25
The mapped value of a character is easily obtained by doing the
following:
For lower case characters, subtract âaâ from the character.
For upper case characters, subtract âAâ from the character.
To calculate the modified value of the first character of input we
add its mapped value to the mapped value from the first character of the
encryption string. This modified value is then adjusted using % 26 to make sure
that the final modified value is within the 0 â 25 range. To create the final
encrypted character value for the first character, simply do the following:
For lower case characters, add âaâ to the modified value.
For upper case characters, add âAâ to the modified value.
This is done for each alphabetic character in the input string.
Non-alphabetic characters simply maintain their present value. If the input
string is longer than the encryption string, simply reuse mapped values from
the encryption string. For instance, if the encryption string has 10 characters
(index values 0 â 9), when processing the 11th input character (index 10),
simply use the input character index % length of encryption string (in this
case 10 % 10 is 0) to select the value from the encryption string to use for
mapping.
The decryption process is basically the same as the encryption
process. The only difference is the value of the mapped character from the
encryption string.
For lower case encryption, the mapped from encryption string â âaâ
For upper case encryption, the mapped from encryption string â âAâ
For lower case decryption, the mapped â (character from encryption
string â âaâ)
For upper case decryption, the mapped â (character from encryption string â
âAâ)
Program Requirements
Your program must meet the following requirements:
1. You must ask the user if they want to perform an encryption or
decryption operation.
2. You must ask the user to enter the name of the file they want to encrypt or
decrypt.
3. You must get an encryption key from the user which can be up to 128
characters. The key must be all lower case alphabetic characters.
4. You must have a function which takes the encryption key and creates an
encryption map from it. For each character in the encryption key string,
subtract the lower case letter âaâ and store the result in the corresponding
encryption map array.
5. You must have a function which takes the encryption key and creates a
decryption map from it. For each character in the encryption key string,
subtract the lower case letter âaâ from it. Then subtract that result from 26
and store the value in the corresponding decryption map array.
6. You must have a function which will do the encryption or decryption
transformation. This function takes the following parameters:
A constant C string containing the line of text to be transformed.
A constant C character array which contains the encryption or decryption map.
An integer which contains the length of the encryption map.
A string reference (output) which will contain the encrypted or decrypted
string upon completion.
The core of the encryption / decryption algorithm is as follows:
For each character (the ith character) in the text input line do
the following:
if the character is not alphabetical, add it to the end of the output string
if the character is lower case alphabetical
subtract the character âaâ from the character
get the ith % map length element from the map and add it to the character
adjust the value of the character % 26 to keep it within the alphabet
add the character âaâ to the character
add the encrypted character value to the end of the output string
if the character is upper case alphabetical
do the same thing as for lower case except use âAâ instead of âaâ
7. For decryption, the main program should create an ifstream for
the file to be decrypted. It should use the getline method of the ifstream to
read lines from the file, call the encryption / decryption function with the
line to be decrypted, and display the string which contains the result of the
encryption / decryption function call. Repeat until the ifstream reaches the
end of the file, then close the ifstream.
8. For encryption, the main program should create an ifstream for
the file to be encrypted. It should also create an ofstream for the file where
the encrypted result will be stored. The file name for this file can be gotten
from the user or can be the input file name with a special extension added at
the end. The getline method of the ifstream is used to read lines from the
input file. Then the encryption / decryption function is called to encrypt the
line. Display the string containing the result and write the string to the
ofstream. Close the ifstream and ofstreams when finished.
9. Make sure that your program allows the user to encrypt /
decrypt more than one file per session. This means adding a loop which allows
the entire program to repeat until the user has nothing more to do.
Hints
1. Use C strings for the encryption string and the file names. Use
char arrays for the encryption and decryption maps. You cannot treat these as C
strings because the maps can contain 0 as a valid data item rather than the end
of string marker.
2. Use a string type variable to hold the encrypted and decrypted
strings. The string type allows you to add characters to the end of a string
using thepush_back method, and it allows you to dump the contents of the string
using the erase method.
3. For input streams, you can use the eof method to determine when
you have reached the end of a file.
4. Use a character array to read data from the files. Set the
maximum length for this buffer to be 256 characters.
Development Strategy
I would recommend that you build this project in two phases. The
first phase should concentrate on getting the encryption and decryption map
functions and the encryption / decryption function working. You can test this
by using fixed C strings for the input line and the encryption string. Call the
map functions, then encrypt the fixed input string, output the result, then
decrypt the encrypted string and output the result. When your final output is
the same as the original input, your encryption / decryption functions are
working. The second phase adds the file operations.
Testing and Deliverables
When you think you have a working program, use Notepad to create a
file with plain text in it. You should enter some different length lines
containing a variety of characters. Your file should have at least 10 lines.
You should try using short and long encryption keys. Using your program,
encrypt the file, then decrypt the encrypted file. Take a screen shot of your
decrypted output and paste it into a Word document. Also copy the contents of
your original file and the encrypted file into the Word document. Clearly label
the contents of the Word document. Then copy your source code into your document.
Make sure that you have used proper coding style and commenting conventions!