ste2

A Simple Text Encoder. Nothing really fancy.

Compiling

You can use gcc to compile the code, to do so simply run:

g++ -o encode encode.cpp --static && g++ -o decode decode.cpp --static

I haven't tested it with other compilers, but it should work (it's a simple 1 file (well 2 technically) project).

Encode/decode text

Encoding and decoding text is pretty easy: simply use "encode" to encode the text with:

./encode Text to encode

For decoding a text, you can use "decode":

./decode CACACBCCCBADCBDDCBCACBCCCBCAABACABAA

Encode/decode files

You'll need to use the "-f" argument to encode and decode a file. To encode a file, use this, where "filename" is the name of the file you want to encode:

./encode filename

This will output the text directly to the terminal, but you can use some bash magic to output it to a file instead, ex: encoded.txt

./encode filename > encoded.txt

Do decode a file, you can use "decode" with the "-f" argument like so, using outputfile as the file that will get written:

./decode -f CBBACBBCABACABAA outputfile

If you do not specify an output file, it will write the output to "decoded.bin" by default.

If you want to decode from a file and write the output to another file, you can use the "-F" option, like so:

./decode -F output input.txt

If, for example, you want to encode and decode a program named "hi", you do something like this:

./encode -f hi > encoded.txt

./decode -F decodedHi encoded.txt
chmod +x decodedHi

How does it works?

If you know how base64 works, then you'll see some similarities between how both encoders works; in fact, I just learned how base64 worked and then wanted to create my own encoder, so I basically created it using what I knew from base64.

Let's say you have a string, for example: Hi!.
Now, convert it to binary: 01001000 01101001 00100001.
Next, remove all of the spaces: 010010000110100100100001.
Then, split the string in pairs of 2 characters: 01 00 10 00 01 10 10 01 00 10 00 01 (That's where the "2" in "ste2" comes from).

Then, map each pairs of characters to their corresponding letter with this:

Pair	Letter
00	A
10	B
01	C
11	D

So:

01 = C
00 = A
10 = B
00 = A
01 = C
10 = B
10 = B
01 = C
00 = A
10 = B
00 = A
01 = C

Which gives us the following encoded string: CABACBBCABAC
So, Hi! turns into CABACBBCABAC after being encoded.

The same process is used to encode a file, the only difference being that we take the binary of the file instead of converting some text to binary.