Is it possible to assign the local variable after calling a global function with the same name?-CodePudding

Suppose I have defined a function foo:

def foo():
    print('hi')
    return np.array([1,2,3])

I want to use the result it provides inside another function called 'execute', and assign that result to local variable having the same name 'foo':

def execute():
    foo = foo()
    foo -= 1
    print(foo)

execute()

The above will result in "local variable 'foo' referenced before assignment".

Now if I use global inside my execute function:

def execute():
    global foo
    foo = foo()
    ...

It will work but after calling it once it will rewrite the global function, which isn't what we want.

CodePudding user response：

In this example, it would perhaps be best to rename the function to get_foo() or make_foo() or generate_foo(), to disambiguate from the object foo it returns.

CodePudding user response：

You could use globals() directly:

def execute():
    foo = globals()["foo"]()
    foo -= 1
    print(foo)

But really I think you should avoid the name conflict in the first place, which would be less confusing to readers:

def execute():
    foo_result = foo()
    foo_result -= 1
    print(foo_result)