Simon Willison’s Weblog

Is it bad practice to have a variable that has the same name as a function?

28th September 2012

My answer to Is it bad practice to have a variable that has the same name as a function? on Quora

Yes, it’s definitely not a good idea. In Python functions and variables share the same namespace, so if you create a variable with the same name as a function you won’t be able to call that function.

(I admit I do break this rule occasionally when the variable scope is short enough that I’m certain it won’t cause any problems... but I shouldn’t. Do what I say, not what I do!)