Undefined variable error in function

Question

I don't understand why I have the error

NameError: name 'corpus' is not defined

def pretreatment(fileName):
    with open(fileName, 'r') as file:

        global corpus 

        text = file.readlines()

        corpus = []

        for occurrence in text:
            occurrence = occurrence.replace('.',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace(',',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace(';',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace('(',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace(')',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace('?',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace('!',' ')
            occurrence = occurrence.replace(':',' ')

            corpus.append(occurrence)

    return corpus

def lexical_analysis(corpus):
    global corpus

    lexical_corpus = pretreatment(corpus)

    tokens = nltk.word_tokenize(lexical_corpus)

    return tokens

print(pretreatment("blabla.txt"))
print(lexical_analysis(corpus))

I have called the pretreatment function in the lexical_analysis function, but I still have an undefined variable error.

I would like to take advantage of and ask if there is a way to use the replace function in a more elegant way.

EDIT: Thank you for all the explanations. I just managed to declare the variables as global, I understood what the problem was and everything worked perfectly

global variableName

corpus is a local variable name in pretreatment. Local variables are not shared; the name corpus in the global namespace is independent. You need to assign the returned value from the function to a global name. — Martijn Pieters
– Martijn Pieters, Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 14:55

hspandher · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-25 14:56:44Z

2

corpus is a local variable inside the function 'pretreatment`. Just because you have called the function doesn't mean it would (or should) begin to exist in the global scope. Try reading about scopes in Python.

print(lexical_analysis(pretreatment('blabla.txt')) # should work

answered Sep 25, 2017 at 14:56

hspandher

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Raj · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-25 15:30:54Z

1

corpus is not defined in global scope, so you are getting error.

you can use like this,

 corpus = pretreatment("blabla.txt")

 print(lexical_analysis(corpus))

or

print(lexical_analysis(pretreatment("blabla.txt")))

answered Sep 25, 2017 at 15:30

Raj

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