Int conversion not working [duplicate]

I'm creating a highscore feature for my game but I cant get it to work

here is my method for it:

def game_over(self):
    # Game over Screen
    keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
    self.gameover = pygame.image.load('resources/screen/game_over.png')
    screen.blit(self.gameover,(0,0))

    high_filer = open('highscores.txt', 'r')
    highscore = high_filer.read()
    high_filer.close()
    int(highscore)
    int(self.score)
    print highscore + self.score

    if self.score > highscore: 
        high_filew = open('highscores.txt', 'w')
        high_filew.write(str(self.score))
        high_filew.close()

    if (keys[K_RETURN]):
        self.state = 1

What it does is reads the most recent highscore from a .txt file and checks if the players score is higher if it is it writes the new highscore into the file

I convert the string from highscore into a int by using int(highscore) then and on line 10 I do print highscore + self.score as a test but I throws an error that says that I can't add a str and an int even though I converted highscore to an int and I converted self.score so for some reason one of the conversions didn't work

Solution 1:

int() returns an integer, but you discard that result. Reassign it:

highscore = int(highscore)

The function does not change the variable in-place. If self.score is a string as well, you'll need to do the same thing for int(self.score), or just remove that line.