[Usenet: from `rotate alphabet 13 places'] The simple Caesar-cypher
encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places
forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!"
becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting
programs include a rot13 feature. It is used to enclose the text in a
sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open -- e.g., for
posting things that might offend some readers, or {spoiler}s. A major
advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it is
self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and decoding.
See also {spoiler space}, which has partly displaced rot13 since
non-Unix-based newsreaders became common.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {dogcow}{furrfu}{spoiler}{zbeba}]