Caesar Cipher encryptor using ASCII

Your code is one block, one piece of code that goes from start to finish, mixing logic and user-interface. While it works (Great!) this is sub-optimal for readibility and maintanability.

I will now show you what I think is a more readable approach. (The concept is the same, but this code will behave a bit differently than yours. Adapting it to your needs is left as an exercise for the reader).

Without farther ado, let's start:

 require 'arrow_test'

This code imports an automated testing framework I wrote, inatalling it is as easy as gem install arrow_test in the command line. Automated tests run in milliseconds to verify the correctness of your code.

ALPHABET = ("a".."z").to_a

The alphabet. Note that UPPERCASE means that it cannot be changed. It is a constant.

# Moves a letter forward in the alphabet by
# the given key wrapping around.
#

A short summary of what the function does, method level comments are encouraged over line level comments.

# <code> 
# shift('a', 2) #=> 'c' 
# </code>
#
# <code> 
# shift('z', 2) #=> 'b' 
# </code>

Example usage that doubles as tests, you may change them to see what happens.

 def shift(letter, key)
     ALPHABET[ (ALPHABET.index(letter) + key) % ALPHABET.length]
 end

This is a function, takes an input and has an output, It applies the Caesar cipher logic to a single character. The modulo operator % makes it behave like the alphabet is a circle. You may see the example with z.

 # Encrypts a text using by shifting all its letters by
 # the given key. All characters that are not lower and alphabetic
 # are deleted.
 # 
 # <code>
 # monoalphabetic_cipher('abcd', 2) #=> 'cdef'
 # </code>
 # 
 # <code>
 # monoalphabetic_cipher('cdef', 2, decode=true) #=> 'abcd'
 # </code>

A short phrase of description and a pair of tests like the other function.

 def monoalphabetic_cipher(text, key, decode=false)
   text
    .chars       
    .select { |char| ALPHABET.include?(char) }
    .map {|char| shift(char, (decode ? 26 - key : key) )}
    .join
 end

Here I discard the non-lowercase chars, (select line), and apply the shift to each char (map line). chars and join are just to go from string to list and viceversa, not important. Seeing a 'flowchart' of the code may help understanding.

And this is all, try it with:

puts 'Enter shift and then text'
shift = gets.chomp.to_i
text = gets.chomp
puts monoalphabetic_cipher(text, shift)

Now user interface and logic are separated and the logic is tested. Feel free to ask any question