I have two files, one is in the webroot, and another is a bootstrap located one folder above the web root (this is CGI programming by the way).
The index file in the web
Don't declare it global, pass it instead and return it if you need to have a new value, like this:
def initialize(a): print('Content-type: text/html\n\n') print a return 'h' ---- import bootstrap b = bootstrap.initialize('testVar')