name 'times' is used prior to global declaration - But IT IS declared!

Question

I'm coding a small program to time and show, in a ordered fashion, my Rubik's cube solvings. But Python (3) keeps bothering me about times being used prior to global declaration. But what's strange is that IT IS declared, right on the beggining, as times = [] (yes, it's a list) and then again, on the function (that's where he complains) as times = [some, weird, list] and "globaling" it with global times. Here is my code, so you may analyse it as you want:

import time  times = []  def timeit():     input("Press ENTER to start: ")     start_time = time.time()     input("Press ENTER to stop: ")     end_time = time.time()     the_time = round(end_time - start_time, 2)     print(str(the_time))     times.append(the_time)     global times     main()  def main():     print ("Do you want to...")     print ("1. Time your solving")     print ("2. See your solvings")     dothis = input(":: ")     if dothis == "1":         timeit()     elif dothis == "2":         sorte_times = times.sort()         sorted_times = sorte_times.reverse()         for curr_time in sorted_times:             print("%d - %f" % ((sorted_times.index(curr_time)+1), curr_time))     else:         print ("WTF? Please enter a valid number...")         main()  main() 

Any help would be very appreciated as I'm new in the world of Python :)

Answer 1

The global declaration is when you declare that times is global

def timeit():     global times # <- global declaration     # ... 

If a variable is declared global, it can't be used before the declaration.

In this case, I don't think you need the declaration at all, because you're not assigning to times, just modifying it.