What's the pythonic way of conditional variable initialization?

Question

Due to the scoping rules of Python, all variables once initialized within a scope are available thereafter. Since conditionals do not introduce new scope, constructs in other l

Answer 1

In general second approach is better and more generic because it doesn't involve calling get_message unconditionally. Which may be ok if that function is not resource incentive but consider a search function

def search(engine):
    results = get_from_google()
    if engine == 'bing':
       results = get_from_bing()

obviously this is not good, i can't think of such bad scenario for second case, so basically a approach which goes thru all options and finally does the default is best e.g.

def search(engine):
    if engine == 'bing':
       results = get_from_bing()
    else:
       results = get_from_google()