A robust program should pass spaces, periods, and exclamation marks through without breaking. Ensure your else statement catches all non-targeted characters. If you want to customize this further, let me know:

# Test with a more complex string test = "CodeHS 8.3.8 is fun!" print("\nTest original:", test) enc_test = encode(test) print("Test encoded:", enc_test) print("Test decoded:", decode(enc_test))

print("Original: " + original_message) print("Encoded: " + encoded_message)

Another tip for passing the CodeHS autograder is to ensure your function exactly matches the naming conventions in the instructions. Python is case-sensitive, so "Encrypt" and "encrypt" are seen as two different things.

Creating a custom encoding scheme requires structured planning, mapping keys systematically, and building an algorithmic decoder. 💡 Understanding the Core Concepts

The real goal of 8.3.8 is – understanding that all data is just numbers until we assign meaning.