Caesar Cipher Encryption/Decryption

A comprehensive Caesar cipher implementation in Rust with both library and CLI functionality. Supports uppercase and lowercase letters with robust error handling.

Features

• 🔐 Caesar cipher encryption and decryption
• 🔤 Both uppercase and lowercase letter support
• ⚡ Fast and efficient implementation
• 🛡️ Safe functions with error handling
• 💻 Command-line interface (CLI)
• 📁 File input/output support
• 🔍 Brute force decryption
• 🎯 Interactive mode
• ✅ Comprehensive test coverage

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
caesar_cipher_enc_dec = "1.0.10"

Note: This version is pinned for documentation consistency with this repository (Cargo.toml). For the latest release, always check crates.io.

Library Usage

Basic Usage

use caesar_cipher_enc_dec::caesar_cipher::{encrypt, decrypt};

fn main() {
    let text = "Hello World!";
    let encrypted = encrypt(text, 3);
    let decrypted = decrypt(&encrypted, 3);
    
    println!("Original: {}", text);
    println!("Encrypted: {}", encrypted);  // "Khoor Zruog!"
    println!("Decrypted: {}", decrypted);  // "Hello World!"
}

Basic vs Safe APIs

Use *_safe when you want validation errors instead of silent normalization.

Safe Functions with Error Handling

use caesar_cipher_enc_dec::caesar_cipher::{encrypt_safe, decrypt_safe};

fn main() {
    match encrypt_safe("Hello World", 3) {
        Ok(encrypted) => println!("Encrypted: {}", encrypted),
        Err(e) => println!("Error: {}", e),
    }
    
    // Error handling for invalid inputs
    match encrypt_safe("", 3) {
        Ok(_) => println!("Success"),
        Err(e) => println!("Error: {}", e), // "Input text cannot be empty"
    }
    
    match encrypt_safe("Test", 30) {
        Ok(_) => println!("Success"),
        Err(e) => println!("Error: {}", e), // "Shift value 30 is out of range (-25 to 25)"
    }
}

Brute Force Decryption

use caesar_cipher_enc_dec::caesar_cipher::decrypt;

fn brute_force_decrypt(encrypted_text: &str) {
    println!("Trying all possible shifts:");
    for shift in 1..=25 {
        let decrypted = decrypt(encrypted_text, shift);
        println!("Shift {}: {}", shift, decrypted);
    }
}

CLI Usage

Installation

cargo install caesar_cipher_enc_dec

Basic Commands

# Encrypt text
caesar_cipher_enc_dec encrypt --text "Hello World" --shift 3

# Decrypt text
caesar_cipher_enc_dec decrypt --text "Khoor Zruog" --shift 3

# Interactive mode
caesar_cipher_enc_dec interactive

# Brute force decryption (try all shifts)
caesar_cipher_enc_dec brute-force --text "Khoor Zruog"

# Show help
caesar_cipher_enc_dec --help

File Operations

# Encrypt from file
caesar_cipher_enc_dec encrypt --file input.txt --shift 5 --output encrypted.txt

# Decrypt from file
caesar_cipher_enc_dec decrypt --file encrypted.txt --shift 5 --output decrypted.txt

Safe Mode

# Use safe mode with error checking
caesar_cipher_enc_dec encrypt --text "Hello" --shift 3 --safe

Without --safe, the CLI accepts any i16 shift (values are normalized modulo 26) and allows empty input. With --safe, shift must be in -25..=25 and text must not be empty or whitespace-only.

Input limits and file requirements

Maximum payload size is 10 MB (MAX_INPUT_SIZE in config). How the cap is applied depends on the input path:

Additional notes:

• Shift prompts in interactive mode are capped at 64 bytes per line (MAX_SHIFT_LINE_SIZE).
• Stdin uses chunked reads (8 KB buffer) for performance; the 10 MB cap still applies to line content.
• If you raise MAX_INPUT_SIZE in the future, consider tuning the read buffer in bounded_input.rs.

Supported Characters

• Uppercase letters: A-Z
• Lowercase letters: a-z
• Other characters: Numbers, symbols, and non-ASCII characters remain unchanged

Examples

use caesar_cipher_enc_dec::caesar_cipher::*;

fn main() {
    // Mixed case with symbols
    let text = "Hello, World! 123";
    let encrypted = encrypt(text, 13);
    println!("{} -> {}", text, encrypted); // "Hello, World! 123" -> "Uryyb, Jbeyq! 123"
    
    // Japanese characters (unchanged)
    let japanese = "こんにちは";
    let result = encrypt(japanese, 5);
    println!("{} -> {}", japanese, result); // "こんにちは" -> "こんにちは"
    
    // Large shift values (automatically normalized)
    let text = "ABC";
    let encrypted = encrypt(text, 27); // Same as shift 1
    println!("{} -> {}", text, encrypted); // "ABC" -> "BCD"
}

Testing

Run the comprehensive test suite:

cargo test

Error Types

The library includes custom error types for better error handling:

• CipherError::EmptyText: When input text is empty
• CipherError::InvalidShift: When shift value is outside the valid range (-25 to 25)

Performance

This implementation is optimized for performance with:

• Zero-allocation character processing
• Efficient modular arithmetic
• Minimal bounds checking

Links

• Crates.io
• Documentation
• GitHub Repository

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.