I've generally heard that using global variables is a bad practice when programming. So are there any alternatives to what I'm trying to do here, which is to use the variable my_array from inside another function?

import random

def main():  
    create_list_and_find_max_and_min(10)  
    the_smart_way()

def create_list_and_find_max_and_min(n):
    global my_array
    my_array = []
    n = input("How many numbers do you want in your array?:")
    for i in range(n):
        my_array.append(random.randint(1,n))
    print "My array is:", my_array

    min = my_array[0]
    for number in my_array:
    if min > number:
        min = number
    print "The minimum value in the array is:", min

    max = my_array[0]
    for number in my_array:
        if max < number:
        max = number
    print "The maximum value in the array is:", max

def the_smart_way():
    # "This one uses the built-in Python functions for min/max..."
    min_my_array = min(my_array)
    max_my_array = max(my_array)
    return min_my_array, max_my_array

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()
python function global-variables
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