Why globals() doesn't work

Question

I am new to python and I wanted to simply change variables by using globals() but for some reason I keep getting same outpu (1, 2 ,3 instead a, b, c). What is wrong here?

cwp = "01"
aw_sg = "01"

a01 = 1
a02 = 2
a03 = 3

p01g01a01 = "a"
p01g01a02 = "b"
p01g01a03 = "c"

print a01, a02, a03


def load_db(a01, a02, a03, cwp, aw_sg):

    a01 = globals()["p%sg%sa01" % (cwp, aw_sg)]
    a02 = globals()["p%sg%sa02" % (cwp, aw_sg)]
    a03 = globals()["p%sg%sa03" % (cwp, aw_sg)]

    return a01, a02, a03

load_db(a01, a02, a03, cwp, aw_sg)

print a01, a02, a03

Answer 1

You used globals() function to access global variables, but you have assigned them to local variables inside the function, and it doesn't change the global variables. If you want to change the global variables you can reassign the returned values by function to global variables.

a01, a02, a03 = load_db(a01, a02, a03, cwp, aw_sg)
print a01, a02, a03