I have this code that is throwing an error with exec, and I cant get it to work. It works when not in a function, though
def hashCheck(data):
exec("hashes = {'hi':'hi'}") #it was a file import before
print(hashes['hi']) #right here is error
try:
return(hashes[data]) #and here is also error
except KeyError:
import hashlib
m = hashlib.md5()
m.update(data)
return(m.hexdigest())
Because your function has no assignments to hashes, python assumes when compiling it that hashes is a global variable. However, when compiling the string for exec, you do have an assignment to hashes so python assumes it is a local variable. So your exec statement assigns to a variable in the local scope, but your print statement looks for it in the global scope.
It may work if you change it to something like:
def hashCheck(data):
hashes = None
exec("hashes = {'hi':'hi'}")
print(hashes['hi'])
That said, you probably shouldn't be using exec() unless you really know what you're doing and are sure you need it. If you just want some human-readable serialization for simple python objects, you may want to look into something like yaml instead.
exec("hashes = {'hi':'hi'}")instead ofhashes = {'hi':'hi'}?!