How to fix UnboundLocalError without using global method

Question

Hello,

When I was first doing this task the following code was my first attempt.

I know why I was not passing the challenge and I know what the issue was.

Please do NOT give me answers or tips to solve this task because I already solved it.

What I am more interested in is like the title say how to fix that error without using global method.

If I run this code I will get UnboundLocalError: local variable 'datetime' referenced before assignment.

I looked online and figured out what this error means and one way to fix it by using global method.

But, here is the issue, in order to use the global method, it seems that I can not assign any parameter as I will get a syntax error!

But say that I want to keep d and t as the parameters for the function, how would I get past this unboundlocalerror?

combo.py

import datetime

d = '2015/7/21'
t = '5:30'

def time_tango(d, t):
    accurate_time = d + " " + t
    date_format = '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M'
    datetime = datetime.datetime.strptime(accurate_time, date_format)
    return datetime

print(time_tango(d, t))

Answer 1 · 2017-07-21T20:12:42Z

July 21, 2017 8:12pm

The issue is the code imports datetime then later assigns datetime = which overrides the import in the namespace. So when the code gets to datetime.datetime(), it has no idea what you mean.

change the variable name to dtime or some other and you're golden

That is, the unbound error will be fixed. Your code needs fixing to pass the challenge.

You don't need to reconstruct the time manually using strptime, you may use datetime.datetime.combine(d, t)

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

taejooncho

taejooncho

How to fix UnboundLocalError without using global method

1 Answer

Chris Freeman

Chris Freeman

taejooncho

taejooncho