Access a function variable outside the function without using global

Question

I am trying to access a local function variable outside the function in Python  So  for example   bye      def hi        global bye     something     something     bye   5     sigh   10  hi   print bye   The above works fine as it should  Since I want to find out if I can access bye outside hi   without using global bye  I tried   def hi        something     something     bye   5      sigh   10     return  hi   x   hi   print x bye    The above gives AttributeError   NoneType  object has no attribute  bye    Then  I tried   def hi        something     something     bye   5     sigh   10     return bye  hi   x   hi   print x bye   This time it doesn t give even an error   So  is there a way to access a local function variable  bye  outside its function  hi    without using globals and without printing out variable sigh as well   Question was edited to include sigh after  hcwhsa  s comment below

User · Answer

You could do something along this lines   def static example       if not hasattr static example   static var           static example static var   0    static example static var    1    return static example static var  print static example   print static example   print static example

User · Answer

def hi         bye   5      return bye    print hi

User · Answer

The problem is you were calling print x bye after you set x as a string   When you run x   hi   it runs hi   and sets the value of x to 5  the value of bye  it does NOT set the value of x as a reference to the bye variable itself    EX  bye   5  x   bye  bye   4  print x  prints 5  not 4  Also  you don t have to run hi   twice  just run x   hi    not hi   x hi    the way you had it it was running hi    not doing anything with the resulting value of 5  and then rerunning the same hi   and saving the value of 5 to the x variable   So full code should be  def hi        something     something     bye   5     return bye  x   hi   print x   If you wanted to return multiple variables  one option would be to use a list  or dictionary  depending on what you need   ex   def hi        something     xyz      bye   7   foobar   8      return xyz x   hi   print x  bye     more on python dictionaries at http   docs python org 2 tutorial datastructures html dictionaries

User · Answer

I ve experienced the same problem  One of the responds to your question led me to the following idea  which worked eventually   I use Python 3 7         just an example      def func      define a function        func y   4   here y is a local variable  which I want to access  func y defines                      a method for my example function which will allow me to access                      function s local variable y        x   func y   8   this is the main task for the function  what it should do        return x      func     now I m calling the function     a   func y   I put it s local variable into my new variable     print a    and print my new variable   Then I launch this program in Windows PowerShell and get the answer 4    Conclusion  to be able to access a local function s variable one might add the name of the function and a dot before the name of the local variable  and then  of course  use this construction for calling the variable both in the function s body and outside of it      I hope this will help

User · Answer

You could do something along these lines  which worked in both Python v2 7 17 and v3 8 1 when I tested it them   def hi          other code        hi bye   42    Create function attribute      sigh   10  hi   print hi bye     - gt  42  Functions are objects in Python and can have arbitrary attributes assigned to them  If you re going to be doing this kind of thing often  you could implement something more generic by creating a function decorator that adds a this argument to each call to the decorated function  This additional argument will give functions a way to reference themselves without needing to explicitly embed  hardcode  their name into the rest of the definition and is similar to the instance argument that class methods automatically receive as their first argument which is usually named self     I picked something different to avoid confusion  but like the self argument  it can be named whatever you wish  Here s an example of that approach  def add this arg func       def wrapped  args    kwargs           return func wrapped   args    kwargs      return wrapped   add this arg def hi this  that         other code        this bye   2   that    Create function attribute      sigh   10  hi 21  print hi bye     - gt  42  Note This doesn t work for class methods  Just use the self argument already passed being passed to instead of the method name  You can reference class-level attributes through type self   See Function s attributes when in a class

[python] Access a function variable outside the function without using "global"

Examples related to python

Examples related to local-variables