How to Fix the NameError: Input Name Is Not Defined in Python

In Python 2.7 and 2.x versions, the raw_input() function and the input() were the two built-in functions to take the user’s input. But in the later versions of Python 3,0, the raw_input() was renamed as input(), which is now still in use.

Fix the NameError: input name is not defined in Python

In the older version of Python, the input function was used to evaluate the Python expression, but if you want to read strings, then the raw_input was used for that purpose. But now, the raw_input function is renamed as input, so it won’t work in 3.x versions of Python.

Let’s understand it through an example.

We are using Python version 2.7 for the sake of this topic. If you use this on the 3.x version of Python, this code will be executed without errors.

# Python 2.7 version
name = input("Hi! What is your good name? ")
print("Nice to meet you " + name)

Output:

NameError: name 'Zeeshan' is not defined

The above code has caused a Name Error because input wasn’t used to read the string in the older version of Python but to evaluate Python expression. And to fix this Name Error, we can use the raw_input function because it was built to read strings.

Let’s fix the Name Error with the raw_input function.

name = raw_input("Hi! What is your good name? ")
print("Nice to meet you " + name)

Output:

Hi! What is your good name? Nice to meet you Zeeshan

As you can see, the raw_input function has fixed the Name Error and executed the program smoothly.