Automatic l33t speak or super 1337 converter

Convert your text from and to elite (l33t/1337) text autmagically. Written on a rainy sunday just for fun ;). Here is a little history about l33t speak and they say it isn't used anymore since it takes too long to type well, not anymore :D

l33t : l33t (pronouced 'leet') speak is a language unique because it cannot truly be spoken out loud nor can it successfully be handwritten, it is an internet based language reliant on the keyboard. It is, however simple to learn and has much room for creativity. As the internet was coming into it's own during the early 1980's, hackers that didn't want their web sites/newsgroups/etc to be picked up in a simple keyword search began using numbers to replace certain letters (mostly vowels) such as A = 4 or E = 3. At this point l33t speak was only known to a select few and only used when neccesary. However, in 1994 id Software begin to add internet connectivity to Doom and Doom II, leading to a revolution in PC gaming and also to the rise of l33t speak. As with any type of competition, 'smack' talk became prevalent in online gaming. Phrases such as "I am elite" became common place, and somewhere down the line l33t speak snuck in, reforming the phrase into "1 4m 3l1t3" in order to demonstrate that the speaker was a hacker and someone to be feared. It was further exaggerated by purposeful bad spelling and eventually wound up as something like this, "1 4m 3l33t!" and simplified to, "1 4m 133t". Hence the name 'l33t speak'. But eventually, l33t speak began to fall out of use because of the amount of time it takes to type, as well as the overuse of it by some, changing it from amusing to annoying.

Little demo showing 2 levels of elite conversion and that it also has the nice reverse option -v to decifer the 'cryptic' elite writing :)

wschrep@laptop:~/l33t> make g++ -Wall -O2 -I. -c -o l33t.o l33t.cpp g++ -Wall -O2 -I. l33t.o -o l33t wschrep@laptop:~/l33t> ./l33t "the quick brown fox jumps over the yellow dog" th3 quIck br0wn pH0x jumps 0v3r th3 y3ll0w d0g wschrep@laptop:~/l33t> ./l33t "the quick brown fox jumps over the yellow dog" -v the quick brown fox jumps over the yellow dog wschrep@laptop:~/l33t> ./l33t "the quick brown fox jumps over the yellow dog" -l 2 7h3 q|_|Ick br0\/\/n pH0x j|_|/\/\p5 0v3r 7h3 Y3110\/\/ |)09 wschrep@laptop:~/l33t> ./l33t "7h3 q|_|Ick br0\/\/n pH0x j|_|/\/\p5 0v3r 7h3 Y3110\/\/ |)09" -l 2 -v the quick brown fox jumps over the yellow dog wschrep@laptop:~/l33t> ./l33t -help USAGE: ./l33t[plain text] [-v] [-l ] level : 1=l33t, 2=super l33t (default 1) -v : reverse the conversion! string = optional the string to convert use quotes for spaced words if no plain text string is given ./l33t expects input on stdin. Written by Walter Schreppers

133ch I7 : l33t.tar.gz