[Coding Challenge] Secure My Conversation by Encryption and Decryption

This is competitive coding question was asked in Goldman Sachs coding round. There were two coding questions which are needed to be solved in two hours.

Basically you can take one hour to solve this question.

Problem Statement: Secure My Conversation by Encryption and Decryption

Person A and B use an encryption-based system for their conversation.

Each conversation message is encrypted from the source and decrypted in the destination using a shared private positive number key known to each other.

The algorithm is illustrated with an example.

Input format with explanation:

1. Operation (1 for Encryption and 2 for Decryption)
2. Input message
3. Input private key

Output format with explanation:

1. Output message

Example 1:

Input:

1
Open
123

Output:

Oppeeen

Here, the input message characters are duplicated based on each digit in the key.

Example 2:

Input:

2
Oppeeen 
123

Output:

Open

Here, the input message characters are compressed based on each digit in the key.

The conversation message and the private key need NOT be in equal length and the encoding/decoding takes place till the end is reached either conversation message or private key while retaining the rest of the conversation message.

Programming Solution in Python:

#!/bin/python3

import math
import os
import random
import re
import sys



# Complete the secureChannel function below.
def secureChannel(operation, message, key):
    if len(message)==0 or len(key)==0:
        return "-1"

    strRet=""

    if operation==1:
        index=0
        for keyVal in key:
            nKeyVal=int(keyVal)
            if index>=len(message):
                return strRet
            strRet=strRet+message[index]*nKeyVal
            index=index+1
        if index < len(message):
            strRet=strRet+message[index:]

    elif operation==2:
        index=0
        for keyVal in key:
            nKeyVal=int(keyVal)
            if index>=len(message):
                return strRet
            for i in range(0,nKeyVal):
                if (index+i)>=len(message):
                    return "-1"
                if message[index] != message[index+i]:
                    return "-1"
            strRet=strRet+message[index]
            index=index+nKeyVal
        if index < len(message):
            strRet=strRet+message[index:]

    else:
        return "-1"


    return strRet

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print(secureChannel(1, 'Open',  '123'))
    print(secureChannel(2, 'Oppeeen',  '123'))

Output:

Oppeeen
Open

The program is self-explanatory. If you have any doubt or finding I difficult to understand the code, kindly comment your query below.

You can solve this coding question in any programming languages. I choose Python as I feel more comfortable with.

For more practice check other competitive coding challenge questions.