How does one write a function that increments a number?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:53:03 -0700, anonymousnerd at gmail.com wrote:

>   Apologies if this question seems stupid: How does one write a
> function that increments a value in Python? When I tried, the variable
> never changed.
> The session went like this:
>>>> def incr(counter):
> 	counter = int(counter)
> 	counter += 1
> 
>>>> counter = 1
>>>> incr(counter)
>>>> print counter
> 1

Why does it need to be a function? Why complicate matters? Isn't it
simpler to just do this:

counter = 1
counter += 1
print counter


-- 
Steven