My program won't accept my function. However, the function works fine in the console

Question

I'm writing a small program where I print out the number of jobs in the first and last month of the last 6 presidents. I've written a function called presidents(), but for some reason I can't get it working in my program. When I try to run the presidents() function in the python console it works great. But when I try to use the unsorted_pres list and numberPres variable in my main program I get an error that they are not defined.

PS. For testing I have copied the output from the presidents() function in the console. These are the two lines that are commented out.

import csv

def readcsv(file,y,m):
    with open(file) as f:
        reader = csv.reader(f)
        next(reader)
        list = []
        for row in reader:
            list.append(row)
    year = int(y)
    yIndex = year - 1974
    return list[yIndex][m]


def presidents():
    f = open("presidents.txt", 'r')
    unsorted_pres = []
    for line in f:
        pList = line.split(", ")

        name_raw = pList[0]
        name_split = name_raw.split(" ")
        name_list = name_split[-1:]
        name = "".join(name_list)
        pList.insert(0, name)
        pList.pop(1)

        years_raw = pList[1]
        years_split = years_raw.split("-")
        firstYear = years_split[0]
        lastYear = int(years_split[1]) - 1
        pList.insert(1, firstYear)
        pList.insert(2, lastYear)
        pList.pop(3)

        party_raw = pList[3]
        party_split = party_raw.split("\n")
        party = party_split[0]
        pList.insert(3, party)
        pList.pop(4)

        unsorted_pres.append(pList)

    return unsorted_pres, numberPres

print "Government Employment by President (thousands):"
print "%10s%15s%16s%15s%15s%16s" % ("President","Party","First Month","Last Month","Difference","Percentage")

presidents()
#unsorted_pres = [['Carter', '1977', 1980, 'Democrat'], ['Reagan', '1981', 1988, 'Republican'], ['Bush', '1989', 1992, 'Republican'], ['Clinton', '1993', 2000, 'Democrat'], ['Bush', '2001', 2008, 'Republican'], ['Obama', '2009', 2015, 'Democrat']]
#numberPres = 6 #len(unsorted_pres)

while numberPres > 0:
    for element in unsorted_pres:
        firstMonth = readcsv("government.csv", element[1],1)
        lastMonth = readcsv("government.csv", element[2],12)
        diff = int(lastMonth) - int(firstMonth)
        perc = diff / float(firstMonth) * 100
        print "%10s%15s%16s%15s%15s%15s%%" % (element[0],element[3],format(int(firstMonth), ",d"),format(int(lastMonth), ",d"),format(diff, ",d"), round(perc,1))
        numberPres -= 1

Here's the 'president.txt' file, used by presidents():

James Earl Carter, 1977-1981, Democrat
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-1989, Republican
George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993, Republican
William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-2001, Democrat
George Walker Bush, 2001-2009, Republican
Barack Hussein Obama, 2009-2016, Democrat

`numberPres` is not declared within the `presidents()` method — OneCricketeer, Mar 18 '16 at 22:01
@TigerhawkT3 What do you mean by 'scopes'? Yes, I'm a total n00b, so my code is probably horrible... — Gisle Birkeland, Mar 18 '16 at 22:09
Go read the linked duplicate and you'll learn what I mean by scope. It is very thorough. — TigerhawkT3, Mar 18 '16 at 22:10
**What** didn't work? I was simply commenting as to why you "get an error that they are not defined" — OneCricketeer, Mar 18 '16 at 22:20

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 18 '16 at 22:09

You have two problems that I can see. First is numberPres does not seem to be defined anywhere. You return it from your function but it's never defined.

Second you are returning unsorted_pres, numberPres from your function but you are not assigning them to anything. You would need to assign the return value to something: unsorted_pres, numberPres = presidents() before you use it.

My program won't accept my function. However, the function works fine in the console

1 Answers1