Simple question: scope of a variable in function in Python

Question

In beginner terms, why does this give me an error?

hey = 1
def addition(x):
    hey = hey + x
    return hey
print(addition(1))

I get this error message:

UnboundLocalError: local variable 'hey' referenced before assignment

Its outside the scope of the addition function. They are essentially two different "hey" s. They look exactly the same but python doesn't know or think that. — Sam, Feb 22 '19 at 19:27

Error - Syntactical Remorse · Answer 1 · 2019-02-22T19:33:00.920

1

Definitely a duplicate but to answer the question you should look into global variables.

If you want the code above to work you need to tell python that you are using hey as a global variable such as:

hey = 1
def addition(x):
    global hey 
    hey = hey + x
    return hey
print(addition(1))

edited Feb 22 '19 at 19:33

answered Feb 22 '19 at 19:26

@J.Park if it helped don't forget to upvote it and mark it as an answer if helped your problem. – Error - Syntactical Remorse Feb 22 '19 at 19:33

1 Answers1