Global and Local Variables

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Previous Lesson

When you are using functions, you might have noticed that you can't access that have been initialized inside a function, on the outside. Think of it like this. Whatever goes on inside a private place like your home, no one from the outside can know while whatever goes on in a public place, everyone will know. Whatever goes on from inside a private place is like a local variable while things that happen in public are like global variables. So you think you can change or access global variables inside a function just like in the main code but there is a problem. Python thinks you are creating a new variable in the same function. Here is an example of this issue:

• Example

To fix this you can use the global keyword so that Python knows that you're trying to access a global variable and not creating a new variable with the same name. Here is an example:

• Example

Warning:

It is not advised to use too many global variables as it is hard to manage and can clutter the global namespace leading to potential issues.