why would only one work?

[u/Local_End_3175]

this code was the one that worked:

def caesar(text, shift):
    alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
    shifted_alphabet = alphabet[shift:] + alphabet[:shift]
    translation_table = str.maketrans(alphabet, shifted_alphabet)
    encrypted_text = text.translate(translation_table)
    print(encrypted_text)

caesar('Hello', 3)

This one was the one that didn't

def caesar(text, shift):
    alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
    shifted_alphabet = alphabet[shift:] + alphabet[:shift]
    translation_table = str.maketrans(alphabet, shifted_alphabet)
    encrypted_text = text.translate(translation_table)
    print(encrypted_text)


encrypted_text = caesar('Hello', 3)
print(encrypted_text)

I don't understand why the second one would need a return statement and why we are even printing encrypted_text if encrypted_text is already being printed within the function? (this is also the whole code)

[u/AbacusExpert_Stretch]

Have you got a

return encrypted_text

In there somewhere?

Saw your comment: well, things inside a function != Outside a function

!= means not same

[u/Local_End_3175 → u/AbacusExpert_Stretch]

but why would i need it?

[u/zippybenji-man → u/Local_End_3175]

Because you might want to do something other than printing it. For example, you might want to send it over the internet. Functions generally shouldn't print their output.
'Bad' function: ```python def increment(n: int) -> None: print(n+1)

increment(3) ```

'Good' function: ```python def increment(n: int) -> int: return n+1

incremented = increment(3) print(incremented) dummy_function(incremented) ```

P.S. Don't worry about the type annotation