Question

I’d like to be able to do something like this:

#mymodule
var = None

def load():
    var = something()

Other module(s):

#secondmodule
import mymodule
mymodule.load()

#thirdmodule
from mymodule import var
print var #Shouldn't be None

But I don’t know how to reference a modules variable from a function defined in the module.

Is this possible? Or am I going to need to put a global declaration in every place I wan’t to use this.
Or am I going at this completely wrong?

Answer 1

Just change the function definition to:

def load():
    global var # this line has been added to the original code
    var = something()

Global variables are read-only from sibling methods. More accurately unless a variable is specified as global, Python consider it as local, but a read access to a local variable name will reach module-level scope if the name is not present in local scope.

See also use of “global” keyword in python and the doc for more details about the global statement