CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlocal-variables
snakesNbronies
snakesNbronies

Reputation: 3920

UnboundLocalError: local variable "xyz" referenced before assignment

UPDATE: In response to Wooble's comment, adding a "sector = None" before the for simply returns "None". I think the issue is that the variable in the for loop is not being returned.

The following is part of a function that was running fine, until recently, when I changed a seemingly unrelated part of the code.

#--> the only part I had changed recently was adding "stockurl" to the return statement

I now get UnboundLocalError: local variable "sector" referenced before assignment, referring to the "return" line

for sec in root.xpath(r'''//a[re:match(@href, "http://biz.yahoo.com/p/[0-9]{1}conameu.html")]''',
                namespaces={'re': 'http://exslt.org/regular-expressions'}):
    sector = sec.text
    #print "Sector: " + sector

for ind in root.xpath(r'''//a[re:match(@href, "http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/[0-9]{1,9}.html")]''',
        namespaces={'re': 'http://exslt.org/regular-expressions'}):
    industry = ind.text
    #print "Industry: " + industry

#index          --> don't populate here
#followers  --> don't populate here

return a, b, c, d, e, f, stockurl, sector, industry
    #--> the only part I had changed recently was adding "stockurl" to the function

Upvotes: 0

Views: 8896

Answers (1)

David Heffernan
David Heffernan

Reputation: 613302

Let's take a look at the error message and work backwards:

local variable "sector" referenced before assignment

That means that you are referring to sector but that sector has not been assigned, or bound, to an object.

The only assignment to sector is inside the body of the for loop. So, clearly, the body of the for loop was not entered. And this can only happen if the call to root.xpath() returns an iterable object that is empty.

Upvotes: 5

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