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

The answer depends on if there are side effects of get_message() which are wanted.

In most cases clearly the second one wins, because the code which produces the unwanted result is not executed. But if you need the side effects, you should choose the first version.