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Youssef Moustahib
7,779 Pointsinside the function or outside?
When I add "mylist = []" to the outside of a function and run the script and add an item, it works fine, but when I add "mylist = []" to the inside of function "newlist()" I get an error saying " name 'mylist' is not defined"
Why is this? Please check screen shot, under "shoppinglist2.py" Thank you.
ps. is there a simpler way to post screenshots also? Thanks
1 Answer
Frank Simser
2,186 PointsHi, Youssef! The reason you're getting that error is that a variable of any kind created inside one function is not automatically a global variable. So even though the addtolist function is called inside the newlist function, it can't see the mylist variable because it isn't globally available when it moves to that part of your code. The fix is super easy: Inside your newlist() function, before you define the mylist variable, globalize the mylist variable. An example with your code would be:
showhelp()
global mylist
mylist =[]
while True:
Also: sharing your workspace is - in my opinion - the best way to do something like this because it allows people to fork it, run it and see exactly what's happening, make sure their suggestion for fixing it will work before they post it, etc. and that's exactly what you'd do in a working environment where you're using github or some other repository to share code with your peers.