Alan Gauld wrote:
"bibi midi" <bibsmen...@gmail.com> wrote in

Although i have read up quite a lot about local and global scope in
functions i still 'suffer' understanding it, ... I tried
removing it but i get error variable undeclared or something. It is in the
function choose_Cave.

We need to see the exact error text, the whole error.
Python error messages are very informative and usually
tell you exactly what is wrong and where (once you get used to them).

I know that variables inside a function are local in scope and is gone after the lifetime of the function, i mean after that function is called. That is why there is the return statement. What i understand you can access whatever
that function did through the return statement.

Specifically you can access the values that the return exposes,
you cannot access anything else from the function body.

I tried assigning the function to a variable outside the function definition
but still it doesnt work. Something like:

x = choose_Cave()
checkCave(x)

That should work
So what happened? How did the program run and what error did you get?

location = '/home/bboymen/pyscripts/invent-with-Python/intro.txt'
file = open(location)
intro = file.read()
file.close()

def choose_Cave():
   global choose
   choose = raw_input('choose a cave! (1 or 2): ')
   while choose != '1' and choose != '2':  #(a)
       print('enter 1 or 2 only.')
       choose = raw_input('try again: ')
   return choose

You can lose the global line at the top, you are no longer
modifying the global value you are returning the local one.

def checkCave(chosenCave):
   print('you approach the cave...')
   time.sleep(2)
   print('it is dark and spooky...')
   time.sleep(2)
   print('a large dragon jumps over you! he open his jaws and....')
   time.sleep(2)
   friendlyCave = random.randint(1, 2)
   if chosenCave == str(friendlyCave):
       print('gives you his treasure!')
   else:
       print('gobbles you down in one bite!')

print(intro)
choose_Cave()

you are not assigning the return to a value

choose=choose_Cave()

checkCave(choose)
while True:
   ask = raw_input('play again? (y/[N])')
   reply = ['y', 'ye', 'yea', 'yeah', 'yep', 'yes']
   if ask.lower() in reply:
       print "\n", intro
       choose_Cave()
       checkCave(choose)
   else:
       break

You could tidy that up by moving the first lines inside the loop:

while True:
   print "\n", intro
   choose = choose_Cave()
   checkCave(choose)
   ask = raw_input('play again? (y/[N])')
   reply = ['y', 'ye', 'yea', 'yeah', 'yep', 'yes']
   if ask.lower() not in reply:
         break

HTH,

Alan G.


Alan - Excellent comments, as usual.

bibimidi - I would point out that after you remove the 'global choose' line as 
Alan said, you should rename the global variable you're using to store the 
return value.  They're allowed to have the same name, but it's confusing to a 
beginner if they do, since you might assume they somehow share the value.

So I'd do something like:

while True:
   ....
   my_cave = choose_Cave()
   checkCave(my_cave)
   ....



Incidentally, as a matter of terminology, you have lots of 'global variables' in this code. location, file, intro, ask and reply are all global. If it were my code, I'd probably move all that logic to one more function, call it main(). And the only top-level code would be a call to main().

One more important thing. You used 'file' as a variable name, but it already has a meaning in Python, as a built-in type for file operations. No problem in this script, but it's a good practice to avoid names in built-ins, as well as names used by stdlib imports (os, sys, math, random, time, ...)

DaveA

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