Defining global variables for use in Functions

Asked May 19 '15 at 22:44

Active May 19 '15 at 22:48

Viewed 44 times

I'm having an issue with this simple counter program:

import time
counter = 0

def countup():
  while counter < 10:
      counter += 1
      print counter
      time.sleep (1);
  countdown();

def countdown():
  while counter > 0:
      counter -= 1
      print counter
      time.sleep (1);
  countup();

countup();

And the error I am getting is:

UnboundLocalError: local variable 'counter' referenced before assignment

Does this mean that I need to define a counter variable inside each function? I have tried this, but it didn't work. I also tried a global variable at the start using: global counter = 0 but that didn't work either.

Apologies foor the noob question, I'm just a guy prodding a bit of python code.

asked May 19 '15 at 22:44

CYQ00000A

Just use `global counter` at the top of the function body. – Ashwini Chaudhary May 19 '15 at 22:47
1

Even if you solve the global variable problem, your code has infinite recursion. – slider May 19 '15 at 22:50
Yeah slider is correct this code is crazy. It'll never stop until you do it by CTRL+C – kmario23 May 19 '15 at 22:53
@slider sometimes you want code to run until it's stopped – Peter Wood May 20 '15 at 09:41

Defining global variables for use in Functions

0 Answers0