prOGraMMIng PuZZleS & cOde ____

Question

Input

A non-empty encoded string consisting of printable ASCII characters (in the range 32-126), where some missing letters have been replaced with _.

Output

A decoded string of the same length with all letters in lowercase, including the missing ones.

How?

Edit: As mentioned by @Deusovi in the comments, this is a variant of Bacon's cipher.

• Gather all letters in the original string and group them by 5. Additional letters that do not fit in a full group of 5 are ignored.
• Convert each group into binary: lowercase = 0, uppercase = 1. This leads to a list of integers.
• Use each value N in this list to replace each _ in the original string with the N-th letter of the alphabet (0-indexed), in order of appearance.

Example: prOGraMMIng PuZZleS & cOde ____

prOGr --> 00110 -->  6 -->  7th letter = 'g'
aMMIn --> 01110 --> 14 --> 15th letter = 'o'
gPuZZ --> 01011 --> 11 --> 12th letter = 'l'
leScO --> 00101 -->  5 -->  6th letter = 'f'

By replacing the missing letters and converting everything back to lowercase, the original string is unveiled:

programming puzzles & code golf

This is the expected output.

Clarifications and rules

• The missing letters are guaranteed to appear at the end of the string. More formally: there will never be any letter after the first _ in the input string. However, there may be other printable ASCII characters such as spaces and punctuation marks.
• The input is guaranteed not to contain any useless capital letter: all capital letters are bits set to 1 which are required to decode the missing letters. Everything else is in lowercase.
• The input string is guaranteed to be valid. Especially:
  • It will always contain enough full groups of 5 letters to decode the underscores.
  • The binary-encoded integers are guaranteed to be in the range [0-25].
• There may be no _ at all in the input string, in which case you just have to return the input.
• This is code-golf, so the shortest answer in bytes wins!

Test cases

Input : hello!
Output: hello!

Input : helLO, worl_!
Output: hello, world!

Input : i aM yoUr faTh__.
Output: i am your father.

Input : prOGraMMIng PuZZleS & cOde ____
Output: programming puzzles & code golf

Input : Can YOu gUesS tHE ENd oF This ____?
Output: can you guess the end of this text?

Input : THe qUICk brown FOx JUMps oVEr the la__ ___.
Output: the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Input : RoadS? wHERe we're goinG WE doN't need _____.
Output: roads? where we're going we don't need roads.

Input : thE greatESt Trick thE DeVIl EVer PUllEd wAs CONvInciNg tHe WorLD h_ ____'_ _____.
Output: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Some extra test-cases:

Input : BInar_
Output: binary

Input : 12 MonKey_
Output: 12 monkeys

Input : hyPerbolIZ__
Output: hyperbolized

Input : {[One Last Test ca__]}
Output: {[one last test case]}

Answer 1

05AB1E, 18 bytes

Code:

áS.u5ôJC>.bv'_y.;l

Uses the 05AB1E encoding. Try it online!

Explanation:

á                       # Remove non-letters from the input string.
 S                      # Split the result into individual characters.
  .u                    # Check if is uppercase for each character.
    5ôJ                 # Split into binary numbers of length 5.
       C                # Convert from binary to decimal.
        >               # Add one.
         .b             # Map 1 → A, 2 → B, 3 → C, ..., 25 → Y, 26 → Z.
           v            # For each letter:
            '_y.;       #   Replace the first occurrence of '_' with the current letter.
                 l      #   Convert the string to lowercase.

Answer 2

Perl 5 -pF -MList::Util=sum, 75 bytes

@a=grep!/\W|\d/,@F;s!_!(a..z)[sum map{a gt shift@a&&16/2**$_}0..4]!eg;$_=lc

Try it online!

Explanation:

• -pF reads a line of input into the variable $_ and, split into characters, into the array @F.
• @a=grep!/\W|\d/,@F sets the array @a equal to those members of @F that don't satisfy the regex \W|\d. \W is anything but letters, numbers, and _; \d is numbers. So \W|\d is anything but letters and _, and @a has all the letters and _ characters. We will wind up never examining the _ characters in @a. (Note that this only works because the input is guaranteed ASCII.)
• map{a gt shift@a&&16/2**$_}0..4 does the following for 0 through 4: It shifts the next element off of @a, shortening it, and evaluates whether a is asciibetically greater than that element (i.e. whether that element is uppercase). If so, && isn't short-circuited, so we get 16 divided by 2 to rhe power of the input value (0 through 4). Otherwise && is short-circuited and we get 0. map returns the list of five numbers to sum, which adds them.
• That's the element we want from the list a..z, and that's what we get from (a..z)[…].
• s!_!…!eg converts each _ in $_, in turn, to the appropriate letter.
• $_=lc converts $_ to the lowercase version of itself, and -p prints it.

Answer 3

Python 2, 113 bytes

s=input()
i=k=0
for c in s:
 if c.isalpha():k+=k+(c<'a');i+=1;s=s.replace('_',chr(k%32+97),i%5<1)
print s.lower()

Try it online!

Answer 4

J, 62 61 bytes

tolower u:@]`(I.@t=.'_'=[)`[}+/@t$97+_5#.\3|0 2 4-.~'@Z`z'&I.

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Answer 5

Scala, 189 bytes

def f(s:Array[Char])={var j=0;s.zipWithIndex.collect{case(95,i)=>s(i)=(Integer.parseInt(s.filter(_.isLetter)slice(j,j+5)map(k=>if(k<91)1 else 0)mkString,2)+97)toChar;j+=5};s.map(_.toLower)}

Try it online!

Explanation:

def f(s: Array[Char]) = {                // takes a String in input
  var j = 0                              // j stores at which block of 5 letters we're currently at
  s.zipWithIndex.collect {               // Array('h', 'e', ...) => Array(('h', 0) ('e', 1), ...) and we apply a collect transformation (filter/map)
    case (95, i) =>                      // we only handle cases where the char is '_' (95)
      s(i) = (                           // we modify the char at index i with the following
        Integer.parseInt(                // Integer.parseInt("00110", 2) = 6
          s                              //
            .filter(_.isLetter)          // filter out non letter chars (spaces, punct, figures, ...) from the input string (thanks @Arnauld for the fix)A
            .slice(j, j+5)               // "substring" the array to the block of 5 letters in question
            .map(                        // map on the current block of 5 letters
              k =>                       // the index of the next char in the block f 5 (e.g. 13)
                if (k < 91) 1 else 0     // if the current char is upper case (<91) then we replace it by a bit true, otherwise by a bit false
            )mkString,                   // Array(0, 1, 1, ...) => "011..."
          2                              // cast string to binary
        )                                //
        + 97                             // +97 to create a lower case char
      )toChar                            // cast from int to char
      j += 5                             // update the starting index of the next block of 5 letters
    }                                    //
  s.map(_.toLower)                       // return the updated seq of chars all in lower case
}                                        //

Answer 6

Jelly,  28 27  26 bytes

-1 thanks to Erik the Outgolfer & dylnan

^{Not a very Jelly-friendly challenge!}

ḟŒs$Ƈ<”[s5Ḅ+97Ọż@ṣ”_$FṁLŒl

A monadic link accepting and returning lists of characters.

Try it online!

How?

ḟŒs$Ƈ<”[s5Ḅ+97Ọż@ṣ”_$FṁLŒl - Link: list of characters    e.g. "MfUNE_?"  (shorthand for ['M','f','U','N','E','_','?'])
    Ƈ                      - filter keep each if:
   $                       -   last two links as a monad:
 Œs                        -     swap-case
ḟ                          -     filter discard
                           - ...i.e. keep A-Z,a-z since they change when the case is swapped
                           -                                  "MfUNE"
      ”[                   - literal character                '['
     <                     - less than? (i.e. is upper-case?) [1,0,1,1,1]
        s5                 - split into fives                 [[1,0,1,1,1]]
          Ḅ                - from base two (vectorises)       [[23]]
           +97             - add (vectorises) ninety-seven    [[120]]
              Ọ            - from ordinals (vectorises)       [['x']]
                    $      - last two links as a monad:
                  ”_       -   literal character              '_'
                 ṣ         -   split at                       [['M','f','U','N','E'],['?']]
               ż@          - swapped @rgument zip             [[['M','f','U','N','E'],'x'],['?']]
                     F     - flatten                          "MfUNEx?"
                       L   - length (of input)                7
                      ṁ    - mould like                       "MfUNEx?"
                           - ...removes any excess characters
                        Œl - lower-case                       "mfunex?"

Answer 7

Retina, 91 90 bytes

T`l`a
T`L`A
[^Aa]

L`.{5}
A
aA
+`Aa
aAA
+T`_lA`l_`[^A]A
^
$+¶
+`_(.*)¶a+(.)
$2$1
0G`
T`L`l

Try it online! Explanation:

T`l`a
T`L`A
[^Aa]

Translate lowercase letters to a and uppercase letters to A, deleting everything else.

L`.{5}

Split the Aas into groups of 5.

A
aA
+`Aa
aAA

Convert from binary into unary, treating A as 1 and a as 0. Since there were 5 Aas originally, there are 5 as left, plus a number of As depending on the desired position in the alphabet.

+T`_lA`l_`[^A]A

Increment the last a according to the number of following As.

^
$+¶

Prepend the original input.

+`_(.*)¶a+(.)
$2$1

Replace any _s with the next decoded letter.

0G`

Remove any spare decoded letters.

T`L`l

Lowercase everything.

Retina 0.8.2, 117 bytes

.+
$&¶$&
T`L`l`^.*
T`l`a`.*$
T`L`A
T`aAp`aA_`.*$
(.*¶)?.{5}
$&;
A
aA
+`Aa
aAA
+T`_lA`l_`[^A]A
+`_(.*¶)a+(.);
$2$1
1G`

Try it online! Explanation:

.+
$&¶$&

Duplicate the input.

T`L`l`^.*

Lowercase the first copy.

T`l`a`.*$

Translate lowercase letters to a in the second copy.

T`L`A

Translate uppercase letters to A. These must be in the second copy because the first copy was already lowercased.

T`aAp`aA_`.*$

Delete everything else in the second copy.

(.*¶)?.{5}
$&;

Split the second copy (now just Aas) into groups of 5.

A
aA
+`Aa
aAA
+T`_lA`l_`[^A]A
+`_(.*¶)a+(.);
$2$1
1G`

Decode the letters and insert them as before.

Answer 8

APL (Dyalog Unicode), 46 bytes^SBCS

Anonymous lambda, Assumes ⎕IO (Index Origin) to be 0.

{_←'_'=⊢⋄819⌶A[2⊥⍉(+/_⍵)5⍴A∊⍨⍵∩A,819⌶A←⎕A]@_⍵}

Try it online!

{…⋄…} two-statement function; ⍵ is the argument, ⋄ separates statements

 ⊢ argument (no-op function)
 '_'= where equal to an underscore (i.e. a Boolean mapping function)
 _← assign that function to _

 A[…]@_⍵ put the following characters of A at positions of underscores in the argument
  ⎕A the uppercase Alphabet
  A← assign that to A
  819⌶ lowercase it (819 ≈ BIg, with no left argument means not big, i.e. lowercase)
  A, prepend the uppercase alphabet; this gives us all letters
  ⍵∩ intersection of the argument and that; just the letters of the argument
  A∊⍨ which of those are members of the uppercase alphabet; uppercase bits
  (…)5⍴ reshape that to the following number of rows, and five columns:
   _⍵ the mask of underscores in the argument
   +/ sum that; number of underscores
  ⍉ transpose (to treat each row as a number rather than as a bit position)
  2⊥ evaluate as base-2
 819⌶ lowercase everything

Answer 9

JavaScript (Node.js), 125 124 bytes

x=>x.replace(s=/./g,c=>parseInt(c,36)>9?c.toLowerCase(s+=+(c<{})):c=='_'?('0b'+s.slice(4,9)-~9).toString(36,s=s.slice(5)):c)

Try it online!

Answer 10

Jelly, 26 bytes

xn¥Œs<”[s5Ḅ‘ịØaṛi”_ḟ0Ɗ¦ƒŒl

Try it online!

Different approach from Jonathan Allan's. EDIT: So, I, uh, apparently thought of the same byte reduction as Jonathan Allan, so it doesn't hurt to mention his name again.

Answer 11

CJam, 43 bytes

q'_/_0={el_eu=!},_eu.=5/2fb65f+:c1$,(<.+:el

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Answer 12

Clean, 180 ... 150 bytes

import StdEnv
?s=['a'+sum[i\\i<-:""&c<-s|c<'a']: ?(drop 5s)]
@['_':b][x:y]=[x: @b y]
@[a:b]z=[toLower a: @b z]
@e _=e
$s= @s(?(filter isAlpha s))

Try it online!

Defines the function $ :: [Char] -> [Char] with @ :: [Char] [Char] -> [Char] as a helper to replace underscores, and ? :: [Char] -> [Char] as a helper to generate the replacement characters.

Answer 13

C (gcc), 111 109 101 100 bytes

Edit: Added lowercasing per @FrownyFrog's comment; thanks to Lynn, Christoph and user5329483 for their suggestions!

f(s,t,i)char*s,*t;{for(t=s;t=strchr(t,95);*t=i+1)for(i=3;i<64;s++)isalpha(*s)?i=2*i|*s<97,*s|=32:0;}

Try it online!

Answer 14

JavaScript (Node.js), 100 bytes

s=>s.toLowerCase(c=/[a-z]/gi).replace(/_/g,_=>(g=n=>n?(c.exec(s)<{})*n+g(n>>1):10)(16).toString(36))

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Thanks to @Arnauld, saves 2 bytes.

Answer 15

R, 153 135 113 bytes

function(s,S=utf8ToInt(s)){S[S==95]=2^(4:0)%*%matrix(S[S%in%c(65:90,97:122)]<95,5)+97
cat(tolower(intToUtf8(S)))}

Try it online!

Issues some warnings with the use of matrix but that shouldn't affect the result. Also issues warnings as [<- assignment will remove extraneous assigned objects by default.

40(!) bytes down thanks to JayCe's improvements

Answer 16

Go, 219 217 192 210 209 156 bytes

Saved 25 bytes thanks to @Lynn! Saved 53 bytes thanks to @ovs!

Had to lose 18 bytes because of a bug with strings with no underscores :(

func p(s string){b:=0;n:=0;for _,c:=range s{if IsLetter(c){b+=b;if IsUpper(c){b+=1};n++;s=g.Replace(s,"_",string('a'+b%32),(5-n%5)/5)}};Print(g.ToLower(s))}

Try it online!

Answer 17

Stax, 22 bytes

â╟▓ïMeee¶▐f◄┴≈┘n╛äyΩ○N

Run and debug it

The general approach is a regular expression replacement of "_" using a callback function that slices letters of the inputs to compute each replacement character.

v       convert to lower case
'_      "_" string literal
{       begin block for regex replacement
  yVl|& all the letters only from the original input
  5/    split into chunks of 5
  i@    keep the ith one, where i is the 0-based number of times this block has run
  {97<m map 5-letter chunk to bits to indicate which are lowercase
  :b    decode as 5-bit integer
  97+]  add 97 and wrap in array to convert to lower case character
}       end block for regex replacement
R       do regex replacement

Run this one

Answer 18

Red, 247 bytes

func[s][a: charset[#"a"-#"z"#"A"-#"Z"]v: copy""parse s[any[copy c a(append v to-string c)|
skip]]k: 0 t: copy""repeat n(length? v)/ 5[c: 0 p: 16
loop 5[if v/(k: k + 1) <#"a"[c: c + p]p: p / 2]append t#"a"+ c]foreach c
t[replace s"_"c]lowercase s]

Try it online!

More readable:

f: func[s][
    a: charset[#"a"-#"z"#"A"-#"Z"]
    v: copy ""
    parse s[any[copy c a(append v to-string c)| skip]]
    k: 0
    t: copy ""
    repeat n (length? v) / 5[
        c: 0
        p: 16
        loop 5[
            if v/(k: k + 1) < #"a" [c: c + p]
            p: p / 2
        ]
        append t #"a" + c
    ]
    foreach c t[replace s "_" c]
    lowercase s
]

Answer 19

Ruby, 107 106 103 bytes

->s{s.chars.map{|c|c !~/\W|\d/?c<?a?1:0:p}.join.scan(/.{5}/){|b|s[?_]&&=(b.to_i(2)+97).chr};s.downcase}

Try it online!

Answer 20

Java 10, 186 bytes

s->{var b="";for(int i=0,c;i<s.length();)if((b+=(c=s.charAt(i++))>64&c<91?1:c>96&c<123?0:"").length()>4)s=s.replaceFirst("_",(char)(97+Byte.valueOf(b,2))+(b=""));return s.toLowerCase();}

Try it online.

Explanation:

s->{                            // Method with String as both parameter and return-type
  var b="";                     //  Binary-String, starting empty
  for(int i=0,c;i<s.length();)  //  Loop over the characters of the input-String
    if((b+=(c=s.charAt(i++))>64&c<91?
                                //   If the current character is a lowercase letter:
            1                   //    Append "1" to the binary-String
           :c>96&c<123?         //   Else-if it's an uppercase letter:
            0                   //    Append "0" to the binary-String
           :                    //   Else (not a letter):
            "")                 //    Append nothing to the binary-String
       .length()>4)             //   And if the length is now 5:
      s=s.replaceFirst("_",     //    Replace the first "_" in the input-String with:
           (char)(97+Byte.valueOf(b,2))
                                //     The binary-String as character
           +(b=""));            //    And reset the binary-String
  return s.toLowerCase();}      //  Return the modified input-String as lowercase

Answer 21

Japt, 25 bytes

r'_@r\L mè\A sTT±5 ÍdIÄÃv

Try it

---

Explanation

r'_                           :Replace underscores
   @                          :Pass each match through a function
    r                         :  From original input remove
     \L                       :    /[^a-zA-Z]/g
        m                     :  Map
         è                    :    Count
          \A                  :      /[A-Z]/g
             s                :  Slice
              T               :    From index T (initially 0)
               T±5            :    To index T+=5
                   Í          :  Convert from base-2 string to base-10 integer
                     IÄ       :  Add 64+1
                    d         :  Get character at that codepoint
                       Ã      :End function
                        v     :Lowercase

Answer 22

Pyth, 36 bytes

Km@Gim!}kGd2c@+r1GGQ5VQp?qN\_.(KZr0N

Try it here

Explanation

Km@Gim!}kGd2c@+r1GGQ5VQp?qN\_.(KZr0N
             @+r1GGQ                   Get the letters from the input...
            c       5                  ... in chunks of 5.
 m        d                            For each chunk...
     m!}kG                             ... check if each letter is uppercase...
    i      2                           ... converted to binary...
  @G                                   ... and get the corresponding letter.
                     VQp               For each character in the input...
K                       ?qN\_.(KZ      ... if the character is '_', replace it...
                                 r0N   ... otherwise, lowercase it.

Answer 23

Python 3.5, 296 bytes

u=input();f=u.find('_');m=''.join([c for c in u if c.isalpha()]);z=[chr(int(''.join(['0'if o.islower() else'1' for o in l]),2)+65)for l in[m[h:h+5]for h in range(0,len(m),5)]if len(l)==5];[z.insert(v,d)for v,d in enumerate(u[f:])if d!="_"];u=list(u);u[f:]=z[:len(u[f:])];print(''.join(u).lower())

Try it online

First code golf :)

(I know its not small in bytes, I was just having fun making a 1 line code)

Here is the explanation:

---

User input

u=input()

---

Finds the index of the first _ in the string and stores it

f=u.find('_')

---

strips string of all non-alpha characters

m=''.join([c for c in u if c.isalpha()])

---

Splits the alpha string into an array with each element consisting of 5 characters

Ex. ['THeqU', 'ICkbr', 'ownFO', 'xJUMp', 'soVEr', 'thela']

Then converts lowercase characters to 0 and uppercase characters to 1

Ex. ['11001', '11000', '00011', '01110', '00110', '00000']

and converts the binary string to an integer, adds 65 and converts that to a character

Ex. ['z', 'y', 'd', 'o', 'g', 'a']

z=[chr(int(''.join(['0' if o.islower() else '1' for o in l]),2)+65) for l in [m[h:h+5] for h in range(0,len(m),5)] if len(l)==5]

---

finds all characteres after the first _ and pushes them into the array z at their respective locations (defined above)

Ex. ['z', 'y', ' ', 'd', 'o', 'g', '.', 'a']

[z.insert(v,d) for v,d in enumerate(u[f:]) if d!="_"]

---

split our string into a list of characters

u=list(u)

---

slice our string from the first _ to the end of the list and replace it with the array z. I also had to slice the array z to the length of the split string from the first _ to the end because I got an extra character in the lazy dog example (the "a" at the end of the examples above)

u[f:]=z[:len(list(u[f:]))]

---

*print out the answer *

print(''.join(u).lower())

---

Answer 24

Haskell, 165 bytes

g""
import Data.Char
f t(x:s)('_':r)=x:f t s r
f[0,a]s r=g(s++[chr a])r
f[n,a]s(c:r)=toLower c:f[div n$1+sum[1|isAlpha c],a+sum[n|isUpper c]]s r
f _ s e=e
g=f[16,97]

Try it online! Example usage: g"" "BInar_" yields "binary".

Answer 25

PowerShell, 121 bytes

switch -r($args|% t*y){_{$_=$a[$n++]+97}[a-z]{$x+=$x+($_-le96);if(!(++$i%5)){$a+=,$x;$x=0};$_=$_-bor32}.{$r+=[char]$_}}$r

Try it online!

Less golfed:

switch -Regex ($args|% toCharArray){
    _ {                     # is underscore
        $_=$a[$n++]+97      # get a char from the array of letter
    }

    [a-z] {                 # is letter
        $x+=$x+($_-le96)    # $x=2*$x+($_-le96)
        if(!(++$i%5)){      # if(++$i%5 -eq 0)
            $a+=,$x         # add an element to the array of letters
            $x=0            # init
        }
        $_=$_-bor32         # to lower
    }

    . {                     # is any char ('_' and letters included)
        $r+=[char]$_        # add the char to result
    }
}
$r

Answer 26

Perl 5 -p, 78 bytes

for$h(s/\W|\d//gr=~y/a-z/0/r=~y/A-Z/1/r=~/.{5}/g){s%_%chr 65+oct"0b$h"%e}$_=lc

Try it online!