if I understand 'global x in f' will introduce a local x in f even if there is none, for symmetry with global. Maybe this has already been answered (this thread is getting too long, and is this change scheduled for 2.4 or 3.0?) but
x = 'global'
def f(): def init(): global x in f x = 'in f' init() print x
f()
will this print 'global' or 'in f' ? I can argument both ways which is not a good thing.
The compiler does a full analysis so it will know that init() refers to a cell for x in f's locals, and hence it will print 'in f'. For the purposes of deciding which variables live where, the presence of 'global x in f' inside an inner function (whether or not there's a matching assignment) is equivalent to the presence of an assignment to x in f's body. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)