Web Development – Should Title Case Be Used in URLs?

You are probably writing code like this:

notes_director = argv[1]
chdir(notes_director)
files = glob('*.txt')
rand_file = choice(files)
with open(rand_file) as notes_file: 
    points = notes_file.readlines() 
    rand_point = choice(points)

You should move this code into a function:

def main():
    notes_director = argv[1]
    chdir(notes_director)
    files = glob('*.txt')
    rand_file = choice(files)
    with open(rand_file) as notes_file: 
        points = notes_file.readlines() 
        rand_point = choice(points)

# actually call the main function    
main()

Pylint assumes that code that actually does the work will be inside a function. Because you have this code at the top level of your code instead of inside a function it gets confused.

Generally speaking, it is better style to do work inside a function instead of at the top level. This allows you to better organize what you are doing and facilitates reusing it. You should really only have code performing an algorithm outside of a function in a quick and dirty script.