Unable to retrieve variable assigned in function [duplicate]

Question

I am writing a function where it gets input from the user and sets the variable answer to the answer the user gives. I am printing answer outside of the function, but for some reason, it doesn't print anything.

answer = " "   # set empty in the start
def ask(question):
    answer = input(question) # sets the answer to the user's input
ask("how are you ")
print(answer)  # ends up printing nothing.

Answer 1

answer inside ask() creates a fresh variable called answer; it does not refer to the variable declared above ask().

The cleanest way to resolve this is to return the user's input from ask() and then directly assign it to answer. (You could also use the global keyword, but that's generally considered bad practice.)

def ask(question):
    return input(question)
answer = ask("how are you ")
print(answer)