Implement the classic method for composing secret messages called a square code.
Given an English text, output the encoded version of that text.
First, the input is normalized: the spaces and punctuation are removed from the English text and the message is downcased.
Then, the normalized characters are broken into rows. These rows can be regarded as forming a rectangle when printed with intervening newlines.
For example, the sentence
"If man was meant to stay on the ground, god would have given us roots."
is normalized to:
"ifmanwasmeanttostayonthegroundgodwouldhavegivenusroots"
The plaintext should be organized in to a rectangle. The size of the
rectangle (r x c) should be decided by the length of the message,
such that c >= r and c - r <= 1, where c is the number of columns
and r is the number of rows.
Our normalized text is 54 characters long, dictating a rectangle with
c = 8 and r = 7:
"ifmanwas"
"meanttos"
"tayonthe"
"groundgo"
"dwouldha"
"vegivenu"
"sroots "
The coded message is obtained by reading down the columns going left to right.
The message above is coded as:
"imtgdvsfearwermayoogoanouuiontnnlvtwttddesaohghnsseoau"
Output the encoded text in chunks that fill perfect rectangles (r X c),
with c chunks of r length, separated by spaces. For phrases that are
n characters short of the perfect rectangle, pad each of the last n
chunks with a single trailing space.
"imtgdvs fearwer mayoogo anouuio ntnnlvt wttddes aohghn sseoau "
Notice that were we to stack these, we could visually decode the ciphertext back in to the original message:
"imtgdvs"
"fearwer"
"mayoogo"
"anouuio"
"ntnnlvt"
"wttddes"
"aohghn "
"sseoau "
Look for a stub file having the name crypto_square.go and place your solution code in that file.
To run the tests run the command go test from within the exercise directory.
If the test suite contains benchmarks, you can run these with the --bench and --benchmem
flags:
go test -v --bench . --benchmem
Keep in mind that each reviewer will run benchmarks on a different machine, with different specs, so the results from these benchmark tests may vary.
For more detailed information about the Go track, including how to get help if you're having trouble, please visit the exercism.io Go language page.
J Dalbey's Programming Practice problems http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/103/Projects/ProgrammingPractice.html
It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.