Python handles globals badly.

[random832 at fastmail.us]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015, at 20:01, Michael Torrie wrote:
> The secret to understanding the global keyword is to understand how
> Python namespaces work.  The statement "a=5" does not assign a 5 to the
> box called "a."  Rather it binds the name "a" to the "5" object, which
> is immutable and called into existence by the interpreter
> implementation.

In other words, it assigns a pointer to the "5" object [otherwise known
as "a 5"] to the box called "a". (And increments its reference count, if
you care about how the CPython garbage collector works)