Python Noob help

[Hume's doona]

I'm having trouble returning a variable to the calling function in a program I am writing for uni.

I've stripped it back to post here so I can show only the problematic part.


def main():
#simplified main function stripped to show the element I am having trouble with.
four_categories()
print categories

#define 4_categories
def four_categories():
a="Objects"
b="Algorithms"
c="Recursion"
d="Top_Down_Design"
e="Loops"
f="Functions"
g="Built_in_functions"
h="decisions"
i="Data_types"
print "There are nine possible categories of questions to choose from."
print "You will be prompted to choose four"
print
print "The categories are as follows:"
print "____________________________"
print "a- Objects"
print "b- Algorithms"
print "c- Recursion"
print "d- Top-Down-Design"
print "e- Loops"
print "f- Functions"
print "g- Built-in-functions"
print "h- Decisions"
print "i- Data_types"
print "_____________________________"
print "Enter the letter associated with your four choices."
#user input
categories=input("Enter choices as lower case letters, separated by commas. > ")
return categories
main()



The error I'm getting is this:


Traceback (most recent call last):
File "G:\programming1\assignment2\test_return.py", line 36, in <module>
main()
File "G:\programming1\assignment2\test_return.py", line 4, in main
print categories
NameError: global name 'categories' is not defined
I can't for the life of me figure out the problem. Is there more to the return statement?

I really am lost :confused::(

any help or feedback much appreciated
cheers

Dan

[snova]

I'm having trouble returning a variable to the calling function in a program I am writing for uni.

I've stripped it back to post here so I can show only the problematic part.


def main():
#simplified main function stripped to show the element I am having trouble with.
four_categories()
print categories

I can't for the life of me figure out the problem. Is there more to the return statement?

A bit. Everything is fine except you're discarding the object that four_categories() returns, by not explicitly keeping it. Try this instead:



def main():
categories = four_categories()
print categories

[Hume's doona]

Thank you! That worked.

[Can+~]

You should also consider changing the massive amount of print statements, to one (triple quotation mark):


print """Hello
multiple-line
world!"""

[Hume's doona]

You should also consider changing the massive amount of print statements, to one (triple quotation mark):


print """Hello
multiple-line
world!"""

Thanks, I didn't know about that with the triple quotes

gotta love the ubuntu community :)