[OT] Re: Variable scoping rules in Python?

[Peter Otten]

joshua.davies wrote:

> Ok, I'm relatively new to Python (coming from C, C++ and Java).  I'm
> working on a program that outputs text that may be arbitrarily long,
> but should still line up, so I want to split the output on a specific
> column boundary.  Since I might want to change the length of a column,
> I tried defining the column as a constant (what I would have made a
> "#define" in C, or a "static final" in Java).  I defined this at the
> top level (not within a def), and I reference it inside a function.
> Like this:
> 
> COLUMNS = 80
> 
> def doSomethindAndOutputIt( ):
>   ...
>   for i in range( 0, ( len( output[0] ) / COLUMNS ) ):
>     print output[0][ i * COLUMNS : i * COLUMNS + ( COLUMNS - 1 ) ]
>     print output[1][ i * COLUMNS : i * COLUMNS + ( COLUMNS - 1 ) ]
>     ..
> 
> etc. etc.  It works fine, and splits the output on the 80-column
> boundary just like I want.

Just in case it's not intentional: You'll lose every 80th character as
python intervals do not include the upper bound. The same problem
affects the for loop -- e. g. when output[0] has less than COLUMNS
columns nothing is printed:

>>> range(0, 79/80)
[]

Peter