deob

deob is a command-line tool that animates text by scrambling characters with configurable noise before revealing them, producing a decryption-style terminal effect.

How it works

Each character in the input is shown as random noise for a configurable number of scramble cycles before snapping to its final value. Noise can be restricted to ASCII, alphanumeric, or hacker-style character sets; the default selects the set automatically based on the input. A --markers flag lets you delimit regions within a string so only those parts animate while the rest is shown statically.

Prerequisites

Rust 1.70 or later (install via rustup).

Installation

cargo install --path .

Or build and copy manually:

make build
sudo make install

Usage

Animate a single string:

deob "Hello, World!"

Read from stdin:

echo "Hello, World!" | deob

Animate side-by-side columns from files:

deob --col examples/entries.txt --col examples/entries.txt

Control the animation:

deob --speed 30 --color cyan --charset ascii --order random "Hello"

Use marker regions so only delimited text scrambles:

deob --markers "OS: ~Ubuntu~ kernel: ~6.1~"

Example

Running deob "deob" produces a brief scramble before the word snaps into place. With --color match the noise inherits the ANSI color of each character.

Testing

make test

To verify formatting before committing:

cargo fmt
make fmt

To run the linter:

make lint

License

MIT, see LICENSE.