Question

I’m relatively new to python but think I have a decent enough understanding, except for (apparently) the correct way to use the “import” statement. I assume that’s the problem, but I don’t know.

I have

from player import player

def initializeGame():
    player1 = player()
    player1.shuffleDeck()
    player2 = player()
    player2.shuffleDeck()

and

from deck import deck

class player(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.hand = []
        self.deck = deck()

    def drawCard(self):
        c = self.deck.cards
        cardDrawn = c.pop(0)
        self.hand.append(cardDrawn)

    def shuffleDeck(self):
        from random import shuffle
        shuffle(self.deck.cards)

But when i try to initializeGame() it says “player1 has not been defined” and I’m not really sure why. In that same file if I just use “player1 = player()” then it woks perfectly fine but it refuses to work inside of a function. Any help?

EDIT: ADDING THINGS THAT WEREN’T INCLUDED BEFORE

class deck(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.cards = []

    def viewLibrary(self):
        for x in self.cards:
            print(x.name)

    def viewNumberOfCards(self, cardsToView):
        for x in self.cards[:cardsToView]:
            print(x.name)


from deck import deck

class player(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.hand = []
        self.deck = deck()

    def drawCard(self):
        c = self.deck.cards
        cardDrawn = c.pop(0)
        self.hand.append(cardDrawn)

    def shuffleDeck(self):
        from random import shuffle
        shuffle(self.deck.cards)

and the traceback error is

player1.deck.cards

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in <module>
    player1.deck.cards
NameError: name 'player1' is not defined

Answer 1

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in <module>
    player1.deck.cards
NameError: name 'player1' is not defined

This shows the line where the error is thrown: player1.deck.cards. Said line is not in the code you gave us so we can only make assumptions on why you get the exception.

However, it is very likely, that your script looks somehow like this:

initializeGame()

# and then do something with
player1.deck.cards

This however does not work, as player1 and player2 are only local variables inside the initializeGame function. As soon as the function returns no more references to them are left and they are most likely pending for garbage collection.

So if you want to access those objects, you have to make sure that they stay around. You could do this by having the variables globally, or you could simply return them from your initializeGame function:

def initializeGame():
    player1 = player()
    player1.shuffleDeck()
    player2 = player()
    player2.shuffleDeck()
    return player1, player2

Then you can just call it like this:

player1, player2 = initializeGame()

And have local references to the created objects.

Or even better, create an object that represents the whole game, where the players are instance variables:

class Game:
    def __init__ (self):
        self.player1 = player()
        self.player1.shuffleDeck()
        self.player2 = player()
        self.player2.shuffleDeck()

Then you can just create a Game instance and access the players using game.player1 or game.player2. And of course, having an object for the game itself allows you to encapsulate a lot game related functions into the object as well.