Spyder console: Underscore does not contain result of last statement

Question

My web surfing reveals that the underscore variable _ should contain the result of the last REPL statement. This is what I get instead

>>> 2+7
Out[89]: 9

>>> _
Traceback (most recent call last):

  Cell In[90], line 1
    _

NameError: name '_' is not defined

Is this supposed to be supported?

I am using Spyder 5.4.3 on Windows 10 with Python 3.9, all installed via Anaconda.

Answer 1

It seems that if I assign a function return argument to variable _ [1], the REPL ceases to assign the last result to _. Issuing del _ doesn't seem to restore the default behaviour of repeatedly having the last result assigned to _.

Notes

[1] I found on Stack Overflow that this is one way to disregard selected return arguments when a function returns multiple results. However, there was debate on the advisability of doing this.