the annoying, verbose self

[samwyse]

On Nov 24, 4:07 am, Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch <bj_... at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:55:38 -0800, samwyse wrote:
> > I've had the same thought, along with another.  You see, on of my pet
> > peeves about all OO languages that that when creating new code, I
> > generally begin by writing something like this:
>
> > cat = 'felix'
> > dog = 'rover'
> > def example():
> >   global cat, dog  # not always required, but frequently needed
> >   return ', '.join((cat, dog))
>
> Ouch that's bad design IMHO.  The need to use ``global`` is a design
> smell, if needed *frequently* it starts to stink.

I'm not sure what you mean.  In the example that I gave, the 'global'
statement isn't needed.  However, here's a different example:

>>> top_score = 0
>>> def leaderboard(my_score):
  if my_score > top_score:
    print "A new high score!"
    top_score = myscore
  print "Top score:", top_score

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#49>", line 1, in <module>
    leaderboard(7, 'samwyse')
  File "<pyshell#47>", line 2, in leaderboard
    if my_score > top_score:
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'top_score' referenced before
assignment