How can I make Tkinter entry widget data made available for other functions

Question

I have spent many hours trying to replace the askinteger and askstring widgets with simple entry widgets in this code. I am sure there is a simple way to pass the information from the entry widget so that it can be used in other functions within the code, but everything I have researched and tried has failed. Any help will be very welcome.

from tkinter import *
from tkinter.simpledialog import askinteger
from tkinter.simpledialog import askstring
from random import randrange


def read_file(words_file):
    with open(words_file, 'r') as f:  # Read the text file
        wordList = []  # Create an empty string called wordList
        for line in f:  # For every line in the text file
            wordList += line.split()  # Add another item to the list
        f.close()
        return wordList  # Return the list


def select_word(wordList, word):
    wordLength = 0

    length = askinteger("Letters", "How Many Letters?")  # Ask user for      amount of letters

    while wordLength != length:
        wordNumber = randrange(0, len(wordList))  # Randomly select a number between 0 and length of wordList
        word = wordList[wordNumber]  # Select a word from the list using wordNumber
        word = word.upper()
        wordLength = len(word)  # Calculate the length of the selected word
    return word

def get_letter():

    letter = askstring("Please enter a letter", "Which letter would you like to try?")

    letter = letter.upper()  # Convert letter to uppercase
    return letter

This is the sort of things I have tried. I have also used stringvar.

from tkinter import *

master = Tk()
e = Entry(master)
e.pack()
e.focus_set()

def callback():
    print (e.get())
    global fred
    fred = e.get()
    print(fred)
    return fred

b = Button(master, text="get", width=10, command=callback)
b.pack()

print(fred)

mainloop()

Thank you for your advice. I have now tried the following but still cannot get the print(fred) function to work. I'm sure this is a dumb mistake but I cannot see what I am doing wrong.

from tkinter import *

master = Tk()
e = Entry(master)
e.pack()
e.focus_set()

fred = ''      # declare fred in the outer scope

def callback():
    print (e.get())
    fred = (e.get())
    return fred  # removed global statement as I understand they should be avoided

b = Button(master, text="get", width=10, command=callback)
b.pack()

print(fred)

mainloop()

Answer 1

You must define variable fred in the outer scope in order to retrieve it. (there are other ways, but that is how your code is constructed):

from tkinter import *

master = Tk()
e = Entry(master)
e.pack()
e.focus_set()

fred = ''      # declare fred in the outer scope

def callback():
    print (e.get())
    global fred
    fred = e.get()
    print(fred)
    # return fred  # as fred is global, returning it is optional

b = Button(master, text="get", width=10, command=callback)
b.pack()

mainloop()

fred will contain the value retrieved from the entry field, and be available for further processing