Cat2Text-rs

This is a port of Cat2Text to Rust, with extra functionality, better documentation, and support for using it as a library as well.

Base 4 Format

Using the original base4 format, it works like this. First off, each word is equal to a value in base 4:

Then, the text is converted into lowercase, 96 is subtracted from its ASCII value (i.e. "a" (97) -> 1), and it's converted to base 4, which is then replaced by the cat sounds above; Each cat sound is separated by a space (" "), then each word is delimited by a semicolon and a space ("; ").

For example, "i love cats" is translated into:

meow mreow mrrp; meow mrow meow meow mrow mrow mrrp mrrp mreow meow mrrp mrrp; meow meow mrow meow meow mrrp mrrp mrrp meow mrrp meow mrow

Separating out the letters and words:

[ ["meow mreow mrrp"], [ "meow mrow meow", "meow mrow mrow", "mrrp mrrp mreow", "meow mrrp mrrp" ], [ "meow meow mrow", "meow meow mrrp", "mrrp mrrp meow", "mrrp meow mrow" ] ]

Usage

To use the library, just import the relevant functions, and run it like this:

use cat2text::base4::{encode, decode};

let encoded = encode("i love cats".to_string());
assert_eq!(encoded, "meow mreow mrrp; meow mrow meow meow mrow mrow mrrp mrrp mreow meow mrrp mrrp; meow meow mrow meow meow mrrp mrrp mrrp meow mrrp meow mrow");
let decoded = decode(encoded);
assert_eq!(decoded, "i love cats");

You can use the library to encode anything up to base 16 - for details, see the docs

Binary usage

TODO

Limitations

This currently only supports lowercase text in the latin alphabet, and byte arrays.

TODO

• Make core::{cat_to_num, num_to_cat} usage consistent with each other
• Improve CLI
• Add error handling
• Do AsRef stuff
• Add u16/2-byte encoding in addition to just u8 for greater efficiency