Rail Fence Cipher

Rail fence encode with 3 rails.

How it works

• Wrote the text along a zig-zag over the requested number of rails.
• Read each rail in turn to produce the ciphertext (or inverted the step to decode).

• Spaces and punctuation are treated as ordinary characters and transposed.

Methodology

1. Read the input text one character at a time.
2. Apply the cipher or encoding transformation for the chosen direction.
3. Return the transformed text with a short summary.

Usage

1. Paste or type the text to convert.
2. Choose Encode or Decode.
3. Read the converted text and copy it.

Examples

These are examples, not current values: they use fixed inputs, while the interactive tool computes live results in your browser.

Encode a sample

{
  "text": "HELLO WORLD",
  "direction": "encode",
  "rails": 3
}

Decode a sample

{
  "text": "HOELL",
  "direction": "decode",
  "rails": 3
}

Limitations

How the Rail Fence Cipher works

Encode and decode the rail-fence zig-zag transposition cipher. The transformation is a single deterministic pass, so the same input always produces the same output.