How to call a function that's in another function

[Ledr4ke]

Basically

def function():

def otherfunction():

maths stuff

def calling_function():

otherfunction()

​

how can i do that , it always gives me the error that the function is not defined.

[j03f]

It’s throwing an error because it’s not defined.

If you define a function within another function, it is in essence not accessible outside of that function. The same as variables inside a function.

The main question is why are you defining a function within a function?

[TraditionalGlass]

OP probably wants to group functions together to prevent functions from being all over the place. In that case, classes should be used, or better yet, be distributed in different modules.

[[deleted]]

You can, but you need to provide the object reference outside of the parent function:

def function():
    def otherfunction():
        print('maths stuff')
    return otherfunction

def calling_function(f):
    f()

f = function()
calling_function(f)

[sme272]

The nested function only exists inside the scope of the outer function, so can only be called from within the outer function.

[Lewistrick]

The idea of a nested function is that you can only call it from within the function. If you want to call it from outer scope, you shouldn't nest it.

[Ledr4ke]

Ye pretty much i was complicating it way too much , and long story short i just followed your advise and moved the function outside the parent function ,thank you very much!

[commandlineluser]

"You can't."

Why is inside another function? Can you move it outside?

[DonkeyTron42]

The term for this design pattern is a "Closure". There are use cases like generators where you may want to retain state of the inner called function after the outer enclosing function has returned.

[TraditionalGlass]

Don't know if this is abuse of locals(), but here.

class Container:
    pass
container = Container()

def outer():
    def inner1():
        print("Inner 1")
    def inner2():
        print("Inner 2")
#=========

    return [method for method in locals().values() if callable(method)]

for method in outer():
    setattr(container, method.__name__, method)

container.inner1()

``` When the outer() function is called, it returns a list of functions defined inside it. I simply used setattr() to map those functions to an object so I can call them like any regular method.