From: Meino Christian Cramer <Meino.Cramer@...>
Date: 2004-08-21T04:39:15+09:00
Subject: Neat trick for Steckerboard of Enigma needed...


Hi Rubyaner !  :)

   The Steckerboard is a patch panel on some models of the Enigma.

   If letters are "steckered" (oh, what do I like this language-mixed
   words! GREAT! :), then they will be swapped while encoding.

   For example: If "AG" is steckered, pressing "A" on the keyboard
   will feed "G" into the Enigma and -- on the way out of the Enigma,
   each "G" is translated into an "A" as the last step of
   encryption. Letters, which are not steckered (they are
   "selfsteckered") remain unswapped. 

   From the user point of view s/he will feed zero to max 13 pairs of
   letters to the simulator on the commandline. Each can only appear
   once.

   So I get a string, for example "AGQTRXDF" into the simulator.
   
   Does anyone of the Ruby gurus here know a neat trick to convert
   this into a hash of the form
   
   steckers={
		"A" => "G",
		"Q" => "T",
		"R" => "X"
		"D" => "F"
   }    
   
   in "one turn"? I only know a very "unrubyish" way to do this in
   single steps -- kinda "slow motion" programming... ;)

   As always thank you very much for your friendly help in advance!
   Meino