on writing a while loop for rolling two dice

[Hope Rouselle]

ram at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Hope Rouselle <hrouselle at jevedi.com> writes:
>>Wait, I'm surprised ``outcome'' is still a valid name at the
>>return-statement.  Wasn't it defined inside the while?  Shouldn't its
>>scope be restricted to the while block?  I had no idea.  I should learn
>>some Python.
>
>   In Python, local names can be introduced by an assignment
>   and have function scope. There is no block scope in Python.
>
>   Below, "name" /is/ a local name already, but is being 
>   used before being assigned to.
>
> def function():
>     if False:
>         name = 0
>     return name
>
> function()
>
> # return name
> # UnboundLocalError: local variable 'name' referenced before assignment

I appreciated the example.  I had no idea.  (I had looked up the rules
and it was pretty simple to understand, but an example is always nice.)
Thank you so much.