The Caesar Cipher is one of the oldest and most well-known encryption methods, named after Julius Caesar, who used it himself to send secret messages.
The Caesar Cipher is a tool used to encrypt or decrypt messages. To encrypt, the characters in the text are shifted by a chosen number within the character set. This creates the encrypted message. To decrypt, the characters are shifted back by the same number.
Example: The text 'abc' becomes 'def' when shifted by 3 positions.
To make the encryption more complex, the character set in this project has been extended. In addition to the classical letters of the Latin alphabet, numbers and special characters are also included, allowing a greater variety of characters to be encrypted. This extension increases the security and scope of the encryption, allowing for a broader range of characters to be encrypted.
- Simplicity: The Caesar Cipher is easy to understand and implement.
- Extended Character Set: The extended character set makes the encrypted text more difficult to crack.
- Beginner Level: Ideal for beginners and anyone wanting to get started with cryptography.
- Encrypts and decrypts text messages
- Supports letters, numbers, and special characters
- Adjustable shift value for flexible usage
- Error handling for invalid user inputs
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Programming Language: The project was developed and tested with Python 3.11.
Python can be downloaded and installed from the official website: https://www.python.org/downloads/ -
Python Packages: The project uses only Python's standard library, so no external libraries are required.
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Download Files:
Click the green "Code" button on GitHub and download the repository as a ZIP file.
Extract the folder and ensure that all Python files are in the same directory. -
Run the Program:
Open the command prompt and navigate to the directory where the files are located.
Example:cd "C:\Caesar-Cipher\"Run main.py to start the program:
python main.py -
Encrypt or Decrypt Text:
Choose whether to encrypt ("encode") or decrypt ("decode") the text. Then, enter the text and the shift number to encrypt or decrypt it.
This project was developed as part of the "100 Days of Code - The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp" course by Angela Yu on Udemy, where I learned the basic concepts of Python programming. After completing the basic Caesar Cipher from the course, I decided to expand the project by adding additional features, such as supporting numbers and special characters in the encrypted text. To improve readability and structure, selected code blocks were refactored into functions and moved to a separate module. Furthermore, I considered the possibility of invalid user inputs and adapted the code to handle these errors.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.