In cryptography, a **Caesar cipher**, also known as **Caesar's cipher**, the **shift cipher**, **Caesar's code** or **Caesar shift**, is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. For example, with a left shift of `3`, `D` would be replaced by `A`, `E` would become `B`, and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it in his private correspondence.