What is the Python equivalent of static variables inside a function?

Question

What is the idiomatic Python equivalent of this C/C++ code?

void foo()
{
    static int counter = 0;
    counter++;
          


        

Answer 1

One could also consider:

def foo():
    try:
        foo.counter += 1
    except AttributeError:
        foo.counter = 1

Reasoning:

• much pythonic ("ask for forgiveness not permission")
• use exception (thrown only once) instead of if branch (think StopIteration exception)