[Python-Dev] PEP for Better Control of Nested Lexical Scopes
Jeremy Hylton
jeremy at alum.mit.edu
Tue Feb 21 15:37:06 CET 2006
On 2/21/06, Jeremy Hylton <jeremy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> I had to lookup top-post :-).
>
> On 2/21/06, Bengt Richter <bokr at oz.net> wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 08:02:08 -0500, "Jeremy Hylton" <jeremy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > >Jeremy
> > Hey, only Guido is allowed to top-post. He said so ;-)
>
> The Gmail UI makes it really easy to forget where the q
Sorry about that. Hit the send key by mistake.
The Gmail UI makes it really easy to forget where the quoted text is
in relation to your own text.
> > But to the topic, it just occurred to me that any outer scopes could be given names
> > (including global namespace, but that would have the name global by default, so
> > global.x would essentially mean what globals()['x'] means now, except it would
> > be a name error if x didn't pre-exist when accessed via namespace_name.name_in_space notation.
Isn't this suggestion that same as Greg Ewing's?
> > namespace g_alias # g_alias.x becomes alternate spelling of global.x
> > def outer():
> > namespace mezzanine
> > a = 123
> > print a # => 123
> > print mezzanine.a # => 123 (the name space name is visible and functional locally)
> > def inner():
> > print mezzanine.a => 123
> > mezznine.a =456
> > inner()
> > print a # = 456
> > global.x = re-binds global x, name error if not preexisting.
> >
> > This would allow creating mezzanine like an attribute view of the slots in that local namespace,
> > as well as making namespace itself visible there, so the access to mezzanine would look like a read access to
> > an ordinary object named mezzanine that happened to have attribute slots matching outer's local name space.
I don't think using attribute access is particularly clear here. It
introduces an entirely new concept, a first-class namespace, in order
to solve a small scoping problem. It looks too much like attribute
access and not enough like accessing a variable.
Jeremy
> > Efficiency might make it desirable not to extend named namespaces with new names, function locals being
> > slotted in a fixed space tied into the frame (I think). But there are tricks I guess.
> > Anyway, I hadn't seen this idea before. Seems
> >
> > Regards,
> > Bengt Richter
> >
> > >
> > >On 2/20/06, Almann T. Goo <almann.goo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> I am considering developing a PEP for enabling a mechanism to assign to free
> > >> variables in a closure (nested function). My rationale is that with the
> > >> advent of PEP 227 , Python has proper nested lexical scopes, but can have
> > >> undesirable behavior (especially with new developers) when a user makes
> > >> wants to make an assignment to a free variable within a nested function.
> > >> Furthermore, after seeing numerous kludges to "solve" the problem with a
> > >> mutable object, like a list, as the free variable do not seem "Pythonic." I
> > >> have also seen mention that the use of classes can mitigate this, but that
> > >> seems, IMHO, heavy handed in cases when an elegant solution using a closure
> > >> would suffice and be more appropriate--especially when Python already has
> > >> nested lexical scopes.
> > >>
> > >> I propose two possible approaches to solve this issue:
> > >>
> > >> 1. Adding a keyword such as "use" that would follow similar semantics as
> > >> "global" does today. A nested scope could declare names with this keyword
> > >> to enable assignment to such names to change the closest parent's binding.
> > >> The semantic would be to keep the behavior we experience today but tell the
> > >> compiler/interpreter that a name declared with the "use" keyword would
> > >> explicitly use an enclosing scope. I personally like this approach the most
> > >> since it would seem to be in keeping with the current way the language works
> > >> and would probably be the most backwards compatible. The semantics for how
> > >> this interacts with the global scope would also need to be defined (should
> > >> "use" be equivalent to a global when no name exists all parent scopes, etc.)
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> def incgen( inc = 1 ) :
> > >> a = 6
> > >> def incrementer() :
> > >> use a
> > >> #use a, inc <-- list of names okay too
> > >> a += inc
> > >> return a
> > >> return incrementer
> > >>
> > >> Of course, this approach suffers from a downside that every nested scope
> > >> that wanted to assign to a parent scope's name would need to have the "use"
> > >> keyword for those names--but one could argue that this is in keeping with
> > >> one of Python's philosophies that "Explicit is better than implicit" (PEP
> > >> 20). This approach also has to deal with a user declaring a name with "
> > >> use" that is a named parameter--this would be a semantic error that could be
> > >> handled like "global " does today with a SyntaxError.
> > >>
> > >> 2. Adding a keyword such as "scope" that would behave similarly to
> > >> JavaScript's " var" keyword. A name could be declared with such a keyword
> > >> optionally and all nested scopes would use the declaring scope's binding
> > >> when accessing or assigning to a particular name. This approach has similar
> > >> benefits to my first approach, but is clearly more top-down than the first
> > >> approach. Subsequent "scope" declarations would create a new binding at the
> > >> declaring scope for the declaring and child scopes to use. This could
> > >> potentially be a gotcha for users expecting the binding semantics in place
> > >> today. Also the scope keyword would have to be allowed to be used on
> > >> parameters to allow such parameter names to be used in a similar fashion in
> > >> a child scope.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> def incgen( inc = 1 ) :
> > >> #scope inc <-- allow scope declaration for bound parameters (not a big
> > >> fan of this)
> > >> scope a = 6
> > >> def incrementer() :
> > >> a += inc
> > >> return a
> > >> return incrementer
> > >>
> > >> This approach would be similar to languages like JavaScript that allow for
> > >> explicit scope binding with the use of "var" or more static languages that
> > >> allow re-declaring names at lower scopes. I am less in favor of this,
> > >> because I don't think it feels very "Pythonic".
> > >>
> > >> As a point of reference, some languages such as Ruby will only bind a new
> > >> name to a scope on assignment when an enclosing scope does not have the name
> > >> bound. I do believe the Python name binding semantics have issues (for
> > >> which the "global" keyword was born), but I feel that the "fixing" the
> > >> Python semantic to a more "Ruby-like" one adds as many problems as it solves
> > >> since the "Ruby-like" one is just as implicit in nature. Not to mention the
> > >> backwards compatibility impact is probably much larger.
> > >>
> > >> I would like the community's opinion if there is enough out there that think
> > >> this would be a worthwile endevour--or if there is already an initiative
> > >> that I missed. Please let me know your questions, comments.
> > >>
> > >> Best Regards,
> > >> Almann
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> Almann T. Goo
> > >> almann.goo at gmail.com
> > >> _______________________________________________
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> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
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