Need help with decryption

[Brian]

It encrypts the string and then [attempts to] decrypt it, but it fails.

#include <stdlib.h> 
#include <stdio.h>

int enCrypt(char *string, char *key)
{
 int y = 0;
 int x;
 for (x = 0; string[x]; x++)
 {
  if(!key[x-y])
   y += x;
  string[x] = string[x]^key[x-y];
  string[x]++;
 }
 return 0;
}

int deCrypt(char *string, char *key)
{
 int y = 0;
 int x;
 for (x = 0; string[x]; x++)
 {
  if(!key[x-y])
   y += x;
  string[x] = string[x]^key[x-y];
  string[x]++;
 }
 return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{ 
 char string[] = "goodbye";
 char key[] = "hello";
 enCrypt(string,key);
 printf("Encrypted:%s\n",string);
 deCrypt(string,key);
 printf("Decrytped:%s\n",string);
 system("PAUSE");
 return 0;
}

What is wrong?

[Prelude]

Order is very important in cryptography, when you encrypt the data you add one to the result of an XOR operation by saying string[x]++;
In your decryption routine the order of the XOR and increment is the same as in your encrypt function. There are two problems with this: First, you are still incrementing when you should be decrementing if you want to get the data you started with. Second, you should decrement first and then XOR:

#include <stdlib.h> 
#include <stdio.h>

int enCrypt(char *string, char *key)
{
 int y = 0;
 int x;
 for (x = 0; string[x]; x++)
 {
  if(!key[x-y])
   y += x;
  /* The  ^= operator is easier to read and
  ** more efficient than the way you had it
  */
  string[x] ^= key[x-y];
  string[x]++;
 }
 return 0;
}

int deCrypt(char *string, char *key)
{
 int y = 0;
 int x;
 for (x = 0; string[x]; x++)
 {
  if(!key[x-y])
   y += x;
  string[x]--;
  string[x] ^= key[x-y];
 }
 return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{ 
 char string[] = "goodbye";
 char key[] = "hello";
 enCrypt(string,key);
 printf("Encrypted:%s\n",string);
 deCrypt(string,key);
 printf("Decrytped:%s\n",string);
 system("PAUSE");
 return 0;
}

Also, since the encrypt and decrypt functions are so similar you might as well mesh them into one function for this program. And there's no need to give main arguments if you don't plan on using them.

-Prelude

[Shiro]

The concept of XOR coding is:

A xor B = C
C xor B = A

So you don't need a function for encoding and decoding, just one function that performs the xor-function on both strings is all you need.

This

if(!key[x-y])
y += x;

goes wrong. The variable x is increasing. What you probably want is that key starts from the beginning. You could introduce two indices, x and y. Where x is the index of string and y the index of key. If x is larger than y, then y should be reset to 0 when the end is reached.

Also this

string[x]++;

goes wrong. You want to step through the string. So you should do

string [x++];

[Brian]

Thanks for the help, I knew it was something stupid, just couldn't put my finger on it.