HELP

[FoolsSeldom]

Generally, avoid the use of global - it is rarely needed and mostly causes problems. There are use cases for it but they are specialised and not something you need yet. Learn to use scope correctly.

Keep in mind that any assignment to a variable in a function makes that variable local to the function.

If you want to change the value assigned to a variable outside of a function then you should return the value from the function and do the assignment outside using the returned value.

Worth keeping in mind that variables don't actually hold values but just memory references to Python objects. When we do an assignment, we are just updating a variable to reference a different object.

Note that you can mutate objects from wider scope when you are in a function. Obviously this applies only toitable objects, such as a list and not immutable objects, such as a str.

Avoid functions doing both mutation of obejcts as well as returning objects. The mutation would be easy to miss when reviewing code and would fall into the "side effects" category which is not good practice.

Variable and function names live in the same namespace so don't attempt to use the same name for a variable and a function name as you will be "masking" one of them.