Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!mica!charlie
From: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: ROT 13
Message-ID: <2207@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: 23 Aug 89 00:33:38 GMT
References: <10521@dasys1.UUCP>
Sender: news@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu
Reply-To: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
Organization: UW Statistics, Seattle
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In article <10521@dasys1.UUCP> emjay@dasys1.UUCP (Michael J. Lavery) writes:

>	A question about ROT13.  I know what it is.  I know how to use
> it to read in rn and vnews, but I have been unable to find out HOW to
> post a message or article and then convert it to ROT13 format.  Can
> someone clue me in?

Since you seem to be on a UNIX system, the following answer should suffice.
It is from the article "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" which is
regularly posted in news.announce.newusers and which all new users should
read (not a flame, many new users don't know they should read once all of
the postings in this group, it takes less than an hour).

 6.  How do I decrypt jokes in rec.humor?

     The standard cypher used in rec.humor is called "rot13."  Each
     letter is replaced by the letter 13 farther along in the alphabet
     (cycling around at the end).  Most systems have a built-in command
     to decrypt such articles; readnews has the "D" command, rn has the
     "X" or "^X" commands, notes has "%" or "R".  If your system doesn't
     have a program to encrypt and decrypt these, you can quickly create
     a shell script using "tr":
        tr A-Za-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m
     On some versions of Unix, the "tr" command should be written as:
        tr "[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]" "[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]"

The article doesn't say, but the same "tr" command does encryption and 
decryption.  Try it.  How to run this command inside an editor depends
on the editor.