Can't acces a global variable inside a method

Question

I have a problem that when i try to use a global variable inside a method, an error is produced ("local variable 'b' referenced before assignment"). Why is this not the case when the variable is an element of a list?

this works fine:

a = [1]
def a_add():
    a[0] += 1

a_add()
print(a)

but this doesn't:

b = 1
def b_add():
    b += 1

b_add()
print(b)

Answer 1

The official FAQ page has detailed explanation for this error:

>>> x = 10
>>> def foo():
...     print(x)
...     x += 1
>>> foo()
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'x' referenced before assignment

This is because when you make an assignment to a variable in a scope, that variable becomes local to that scope and shadows any similarly named variable in the outer scope. Since the last statement in foo assigns a new value to x, the compiler recognizes it as a local variable. Consequently when the earlier print(x) attempts to print the uninitialized local variable and an error results.

And for code:

a = [1]
def a_add():
    a[0] += 1

a_add()
print(a)

It just reads value from and assigns value to the first slot of the global array, so there's no problem.