please help explain this result

Yingjie Lan lanyjie at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 17 06:58:21 EDT 2010


Hi, 

I played with an example related to namespaces/scoping.
The result is a little confusing:

>>> a=1
>>> def f(): 
        a = a + 1
        return a

>>> f()

I suppose I will get 2 ( 'a' is redefined as a local variable, whose value is obtained by the value of the global variable 'a' plus 1). But this is what I got:

>>> a=1
>>> def f():
	a = a + 1
	return a

>>> f()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#39>", line 1, in <module>
    f()
  File "<pyshell#38>", line 2, in f
    a = a + 1
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'a' referenced before assignment


I'm not sure how to explain this? Thanks!

Yingjie


      



More information about the Python-list mailing list