What can I do to improve this code?

Question

I'm new to python, and programming in general. I'm also a crypto nerd. I wrote this program to do a simple caesar shift by a user inputted key, and then deshift. I'm really enjoying it, but I've run out of ideas on improvements! Can you think of anything?

def decrypt():
    a=raw_input("Give me the word to decrypt:")
    number=input("What was it shifted by?")
    b=list(a)
    str(b)
    c=[ord(x)for x in(b)]
    d=[]
    for i in c:
        d.append(i-number)
    e=[chr(i) for i in (d)]
    e="".join(e)
    print "Decryption Successful, your word is",e,"!"

def encrypt():
    a=raw_input("Give me a word:")
    number=input("Give me a number:")
    b=list(a)
    str(b)
    c=[ord(x)for x in(b)]
    d=[]
    for i in c:
        d.append(i+number)
    e=[chr(i) for i in (d)]
    e="".join(e)
    print "Your Caesar shifted result (ascii code) is:",e,"!"
    print "Your key is", number, ",remember that!"

def menu():    
    print "\n\n\nWelcome to the Caesar Shifter."
    print "What would you like to do?"
    print "Option 1:Encrypt Word"
    print "Option 2:Decrypt Word"
    print "If you would like to quit, press 0."
    choice=input("Pick your selection:")
    if choice==1:
        run=encrypt()
        run
        menu()
    elif choice==2:
        derun=decrypt()
        derun
        menu()
    elif choice==0:
        quit
    else:
        print"That is not a correct selection, please pick either 1, or 2."

menu()

This is also my first post, so any etiquette I violated, tell me! I'd like to become a part of this community, hopefully be the one answering some questions...eventually. :P

Answer 1

This might not be quite what you've got in mind, but one big improvement you could make would be to use meaningful variable names and insert whitespace.

def decrypt():
    cyphertext = raw_input('Give me the word to decrypt:')
    shift = input('What was it shifted by?')

    cypher_chars = list(cyphertext)
    str(b) # this does nothing; you should remove it
    cypher_ords = [ord(x) for x in cypher_list]
    plaintext_ords = []
    for i in cypher_ords:
        plaintext_ords.append(i - shift)

    plaintext_chars = [chr(i) for i in plaintext_ords]
    plaintext = ''.join(plaintext_chars)
    print 'Decryption Successful, your word is', plaintext, '!'

Of course you could actually compress much of this into a one-liner. But for a new programmer, I'd suggest sticking with readable variable names that make it clear what's going on.

Still, you could do that while compressing the code a bit:

def decrypt():
    cyphertext = raw_input('Give me the word to decrypt:')
    shift = input('What was it shifted by?')

    cypher_ords = [ord(x) for x in cyphertext]
    plaintext_ords = [o - shift for o in cypher_ords]
    plaintext_chars = [chr(i) for i in plaintext_ords]
    plaintext = ''.join(plaintext_chars)
    print 'Decryption Successful, your word is', plaintext, '!'

Answer 2

def decrypt():
    cyphertext = raw_input("Give me the word to decrypt:")
    shift = input("What was it shifted by?")
    answer = "".join([chr(ord(char)-shift) for char in cyphertext])
    print "Decryption Successful, your word is %s!" %answer

def encrypt():
    cleartext = raw_input("Give me a word:")
    shift = input("Give me a number:")
    answer = "".join([chr(ord(char)+shift) for char in cyphertext])
    print "Your Caesar shifted result (ascii code) is %s!" %answer
    print "Your key is %d,remember that!" %shift

Answer 3

I have to recommend against use of input. Input allows the user to enter arbitrary python expressions which is not what you want. Instead use int(raw_input()) to get a number from the user.