That worked... thanks!

I was able to approve CrazyMerlyn's fork

I've been trying to approve this for a week, but I keep getting the error: Description cannot be approved, recent changes from related record must be merged first. Anyone have any ideas on what we need to do to fix? Zebulan updated the description to match mine, but it still errors out. I'm new to this, so not sure how to handle.

I don't know why... but no matter what I do to approve this, it just gives me the error: Description cannot be approved, recent changes from related record must be merged first. Any ideas?

It won't let me approve it since I updated the description on mine. It gives me the error: Description cannot be approved, recent changes from related record must be merged first.

Can you do that?

Fixing the issue would spoil the kata... you'll have to remove the issue if you agree.

Zebulan - I had no problem with the suggestion... i actually appreciated it. I also had no problem with you updating the code to fix it. What I had a problem with was the continual changing of my code when I added a small code phrase to allow those who had already completed it, to still get credit. But, when you marked it as a Major issue and continued to change MY kata, I took issue with it. Since then you've removed the major issue and are no longer changing it, so I'm good. I've updated this kata appropriately.

https://bkaestner.github.io/codewars-rules/ <-- thanks to bkaes, 6th place overall

[T]he code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

-- Barbossa in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"

This also means that whenever you read the word "rules" in this document, you can simply substitute it by "tips" or "guidelines". Heave ho!

Since many people have already solved it and changing the function would break all their submissions, I will chalk this up to retaining backwards compatibility. But point taken, thanks.

Perfect

I was suggesting that you clearly articulate the characters you want them to retain. Give an example or something, like a-z, A-Z, and spaces. Define what a "non-special" character is.

Rather than saying to remove special characters, I would suggest providing a set of characters that you're expecting to remain. For example, you might tell them to only return characters in the set: a-z, A-Z, and spaces (or whatever else you want them to return)

Good catch... updated the starting code. Thanks

Make sure when doing your decode that your key is using the "decoded" text and not the encoded text, meaning you can't pre-compute the key on decode.

From the description:
With the basic Vigenère Cipher, we assume the key is repeated for the length of the text, character by character. In this kata, the key is only used once, and then replaced by the decoded text

Random test cases not working correctly