Python: Why is global needed only on assignment and not on reads?

Question

If a function needs to modify a variable declared in global scope, it need to use the global declaration. However, if the function just needs to read a global variable it ca

Answer 1

Look at this code:

from module import function

def foo(x):
    return function(x)

The name function here is a global. It would get awfully tedious if I had to say global function to get this code to work.

Before you say that your X and my function are different (because one is a variable and the other is an imported function), remember that all names in Python are treated the same: when used, their value is looked up in the scope hierarchy. If you needed global X then you'd need global function. Ick.