Question

So, I need to input a scrambled alphabet, and then input a secret message using that alphabet. My program needs to unscramble the secret message. I have written this so far and am stuck. I was hoping someone could help me. What I tried so far is changing every index in the list to A-Z. My question is how do I use what I wrote for that and make it work for the secret message I input as well.

s = ()

alphabet = input("Please input the scrambled alphabet in order: ")
message = input("Now input the scrambled message: ")
alphabet.upper()
s = dict(alphabet)
num = 1

while num < 2:
    s[0] = chr(65)
    s[1] = chr(66)
    s[2] = chr(67)
    s[3] = chr(68)
    s[4] = chr(69)
    s[5] = chr(70)
    s[6] = chr(71)
    s[7] = chr(72)
    s[8] = chr(73)
    s[9] = chr(74)
    s[10] = chr(75)
    s[11] = chr(76)
    s[12] = chr(77)
    s[13] = chr(78)
    s[14] = chr(79)
    s[15] = chr(80)
    s[16] = chr(81)
    s[17] = chr(82)
    s[18] = chr(83)
    s[19] = chr(84)
    s[20] = chr(85)
    s[21] = chr(86)
    s[22] = chr(87)
    s[23] = chr(88)
    s[24] = chr(89)
    s[25] = chr(90)
    num +=1
print (s)

for alpha in message.upper():
    if alpha < "A" or alpha > "Z":
        print(alpha,end="")
    else:
        print(s [ord(alpha) -65 ], end="")

Answer 1

First, creating the big dictionary s is entirely unnecessary. It literally does nothing: the line:

s [ord(alpha) -65 ]

Is turning a letter into a number, subtracting 65, and then putting it through a dictionary that adds 65 and turns it back into a number.

Secondly, the line alphabet.upper() doesn’t actually change the alphabet, it just returns an uppercase version. You need to do

alphabet = alphabet.upper()

Now for the meaty part. What you meant to do was create a dictionary mapping letters in the code alphabet to letters in the real alphabet. The line dict(alphabet) doesn’t do this. Instead, iterate through the characters in the string and assign each to the corresponding letter. You’re on the right track using chr, but are going to way too much work. How about this:

s = {}
for i in range(26):  # iterate from 0 to 25
    s[alphabet[i]] = chr(65 + i)

since chr(65 + i) is the letter in the normal, ordered alphabet, and alphabet[i] is the scrambled one.

Once you have that dictionary, running through letter by letter and changing it should be easy (and it’s left to you).