Question

Here’s what I have so far:

import string

So I have the user write a 5 worded sentence asking for only 5 words:

def main(sentence = raw_input("Enter a 5 worded sentence: ")):
    if len(words)<5:
        words = string.split(sentence)
        wordCount = len(words)
        print "The total word count is:", wordCount

If the user inputs more than 5 words:

    elif len(words)>5:
        print 'Try again. Word exceeded 5 word limit'

Less than 5 words:

    else:
        print 'Try again. Too little words!'

It keeps stating that:

UnboundLocalError: local variable 'words' referenced before assignment

Answer 1

Your problem is that you are calling len(words) before the variable words exists. This is in the second line of your second code block.

words = []
while len(words) != 5:
  words = raw_input("Enter a 5 worded sentence: ").split()
  if len(words) > 5:
    print 'Try again. Word exceeded 5 word limit'
  elif len(words) < 5:
    print 'Try again. Too little words!'

---

Note that in python, default arguments are bound at time of function definition rather than at function call time. This means your raw_input() will fire when main is defined rather then when main is called, which is almost certainly not what you want.