Why doesn't this very simple function work?

Question

Why doesn't this very simple function work? I get NameError: name 'x' is not defined

def myfunc2():
    x=5
    return x

myfunc2()
print(x)

Answer 1

You've declared and defined x inside of myfunc2 but not outside of it, so x is not defined outside of myfunc2 .

If you'd like to access the value of x outside of myfunc2 , you can do something like:

a = myfunc2()
print(a) # 5

I'd suggest reading up on variable scope in Python .

Answer 2

The x in myfunc2 is declared as a local. In order for this script to work, you can declare x as global:

def myfunc2():
    global x
    x = 5
    return x

myfunc2()
print(x)
>>>5

Hope this helps.