TypeError:list object is not callable

Question

I am a novice to Python and following a tutorial. There is an example of list in the tutorial :

example = list('easyhoss')

Now, In tutorial, example= ['e','a',...,'s']. But in my case I am getting the following error:

>>> example = list('easyhoss') 

Traceback (most recent call last): 

 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> 

TypeError: 'list' object is not callable

Please tell me where I am wrong. 

Answer 1

It looks like you have shadowed the built-in name list which is pointing at a class by the same name where it is pointing at its instance. Here is an example:-

>>> example = list('easyhoss') 

>>> list = list('abc') 

>>> example = list('easyhoss') 

Traceback (most recent call last): 

 File "<string>", line 1, in <module> 

TypeError: 'list' object is not callable

There can be two main reasons the error you are getting:-

• Namespaces:- The first reason is Python supports nested namespaces. Any module you create gets its own "global" namespace. In fact, it's just a local namespace with respect to that particular module.

• Scoping. The second reason is when you reference a name, the Python runtime looks it up in the local namespace (with respect to the reference) and, if such name does not exist, it repeats the attempt in a higher-level namespace. This process continues until there are no higher namespaces left. In that case, you get a NameError. 

So whenever you start an interactive Python session you should create a temporary module.

To know more about this you can have a look at the following video tutorial:-