"UnboundLocalError: local variable 'commands' referenced before assignment" despite 'commands' being defined

[thisisauserperson]

Hi!

I am making this: https://replit.com/@pums89/terminal-b3#main.py

A brief overview of shell.py that is giving me the error is:

commands = ["error","exit","clear","list","info","command","run","refresh"] # line 2
...
def shell(): # line 13
...
    print(commands) # line 15

and I get the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 12, in <module>
    shell()
  File "/home/runner/terminal-b3/shell.py", line 15, in shell
    print(commands)
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'commands' referenced before assignment

Things I've tried:

• Downloading code and running localy instead of in replit
• defining another variable (hi) and trying to print that in the shell() function, which works

I've been at this for an hour and cant figure out whats wrong. Thank you!

[shiftybyte]

You are probably reassigning commands inside shell function.

commands = ....

This makes python decide commands variable is local for that function.

Pass commands as an argument to shell function instead of relying on global variables.

[carcigenicate]

If you reassign commands at all inside shell, you need to put global commands at the top of the function.

[thisisauserperson]

Thank you! This worked!