Suppose I have the following python code:
def outer():
string = ""
def inner():
string = "String was changed by a nested function!"
inner()
return string
I want a call to outer() to return "String was changed by a nested function!", but I get "". I conclude that Python thinks that the line string = "string was changed by a nested function!"
is a declaration of a new variable local to inner(). My question is: how do I tell Python that it should use the outer() string? I can't use the global
keyword, because the string isn't global, it just lives in an outer scope. Ideas?
Best Answer
In Python 3.x, you can use the
nonlocal
keyword:In Python 2.x, you could use a list with a single element and overwrite that single element: