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Common Errors

NameError​

NameError occurs when we attempt to reference a variable name that has not been declared. This usually occurs because

  1. We're referencing a variable that doesn't exist yet
  2. We're referencing a variable that does exist, but we misspelled a reference somewhere

Remember that python runs line by line, top to bottom (once we start writing our own functions this isn't strictly true), so a variable has to be declared above where you first attempt to use it.

In rare cases, a variable can get deleted or "garbage collected" before it is called, and this error can occur, but this is extremely rare in Python specifically. This case is more common in almost any other language, like C or Java, where variables declared inside a loop are deleted/garbage collected once the loop finishes. For example

for i in range(3):
  print(i)
print(i)

will print 0\n1\n2\n3\n. In C, the equivalent code

for (int i; i < 3; i++) {
  printf("%d\n", i);  
}
printf("%d\n", i);

will not even compile, because i is deleted, or "garbage collected", after the loop finished. Keep this in mind in the future if you switch to another language.

IndexError​

IndexError means we are trying to access an element of an indexed collection, like a String or list, but that index is outside the range of the collection.

For example, if I have the String 'test', e is the 2nd character at index 1. However, if I try to access index 4, that would mean accessing the 5th character of the String, which doesn't exist. Therefore attempting to access index 4 will result in an IndexError:

>>> 'test'[4]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: string index out of range

EOFError​

EOF stands for "end of file". If the Python interpreter unexpectedly reads through the end of a file, it returns an EOFError. This typically happens in one of two ways:

  1. The Python interpreter hits the end of your Python source file unexpectedly. This can happen if you write a loop with no content in it (more recent python versions return an IndentationError, but zyBooks will often return EOFError. If you'd like to know why, make a Piazza post asking about it :D)
  2. Your Python tries to read more input than it is given. For example, say your python code checks the first 5 lines of a file. If the file has 4 lines total, Python tries to read the 5th line and sees the EOF character. This is unexpected behavior, so it returns an EOFError.