Help with function - encryption - messages - NameError: name 'message' is not defined

[MrKnd94]

Hello!

I'm trying to encrypt messages using the Caesar Cipher. I've made a function for it. This is the code for it:

def encrypt(message,shift):
    alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' # The alphabet
    
    encrypted_message = "" # The encrypted message as an empty string 

    message = ""
    a
    for c in message:# c travels through the message.
        if c in alphabet: # Checking to see if the message is in the alphabet first, finding position below. 
            i = alphabet.index(c) # Where is c in the message? Counts the alphabet indexing at 0.
            j = (i + shift) % 26 # j can become greater (>) than 25, if we do "j = i + shift"; don't want that to happen, it won't work, so use % 2. 
            encrypted_message = encrypted_message + alphabet[j] # Tells the program to add the characters to the end.
        else: # If it isn't apart of the alphabet, then...
            encrypted_message = encrypted_message + c # Adds a space 
            
        print(encrypted_message)
    return ''

encrypt(message, shift)

Yeah. Long comments. I'm very sorry about that.

And I'm also, in the same program, trying to decrypt the messages. This is the code for this (again, long comments, sorry):

def decrypt(message,shift):
    alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' # The alphabet
    
    message = "" # The encrypted message as an empty string 

    decrypted_message = ""

    for c in message:# c travels through the message.
        if c in alphabet: # Checking to see if the message is in the alphabet first, finding position below. 
            i = alphabet.index(c) # Where is c in the message? Counts the alphabet indexing at 0.
            j = (26 + i - shift) % 26 # Won't go greater (>) 25; also, we might get negative numbers in the alphabet, we don't want that, so + 26. . . We % 26 because when "i" and "shift" become bigger than 26, it'll wrap aroun. 
            decrypted_message = decrypted_message + alphabet[j] # Tells the program to add the characters to the end.
        else: # If it isn't apart of the alphabet, then...
            decrypted_message = decrypted_message + c # Adds a space 
            
        print(decrypted_message)
    return ''

decrypt(message,shift)

And I've tested them out separately, and the error it is giving me is:

NameError: name 'message' is not defined.

I'm at a complete loss now. Any reason why it's giving me this error?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.