How can I share a variable between functions in Python?

Question

I have two functions, fun1 and fun2, which take as inputs a string and a number, respectively. They also both get the same variable, a, as

Answer 1

This can be easily achieved using the global keyword. That makes the a variable available in the whole file. However, the global variables should be avoided as much, because every function has access to these, it becomes increasingly hard to figure out which functions actually read and write these variables.

a = ['A','X','R','N','L']

def fun1(string):
    out = []
    for letter in a:
        out. append(string+letter)
    return out

def fun2(number):
    out = []
    for letter in a:
        out.append(str(number)+letter)
    return out

x = fun1('Hello ')
y = fun2(2,a)