[Python-Dev] PEP for Better Control of Nested Lexical Scopes
Brendan Simons
spam4bsimons at yahoo.ca
Thu Feb 23 03:46:09 CET 2006
On 22-Feb-06, at 9:28 PM, python-dev-request at python.org wrote:
> On 21-Feb-06, at 11:21 AM, Almann T. Goo" <almann.goo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>> Why not just use a class?
>>>
>>>
>>> def incgen(start=0, inc=1) :
>>> class incrementer(object):
>>> a = start - inc
>>> def __call__(self):
>>> self.a += inc
>>> return self.a
>>> return incrementer()
>>>
>>> a = incgen(7, 5)
>>> for n in range(10):
>>> print a(),
>>
>> Because I think that this is a workaround for a concept that the
>> language doesn't support elegantly with its lexically nested scopes.
>>
>> IMO, you are emulating name rebinding in a closure by creating an
>> object to encapsulate the name you want to rebind--you don't need
>> this
>> workaround if you only need to access free variables in an enclosing
>> scope. I provided a "lighter" example that didn't need a callable
>> object but could use any mutable such as a list.
>>
>> This kind of workaround is needed as soon as you want to re-bind a
>> parent scope's name, except in the case when the parent scope is the
>> global scope (since there is the "global" keyword to handle this).
>> It's this dichotomy that concerns me, since it seems to be against
>> the
>> elegance of Python--at least in my opinion.
>>
>> It seems artificially limiting that enclosing scope name rebinds are
>> not provided for by the language especially since the behavior with
>> the global scope is not so. In a nutshell I am proposing a solution
>> to make nested lexical scopes to be orthogonal with the global scope
>> and removing a "wart," as Jeremy put it, in the language.
>>
>> -Almann
>>
>> --
>> Almann T. Goo
>> almann.goo at gmail.com
>
> If I may be so bold, couldn't this be addressed by introducing a
> "rebinding" operator? So the ' = ' operator would continue to
> create a new name in the current scope, and the (say) ' := '
> operator would for an existing name to rebind. The two operators
> would highlight the special way Python handles variable / name
> assignment, which many newbies miss.
>
> (from someone who was surprised by this quirk of Python before:
> http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread43418.html)
>
> -Brendan
> --
> Brendan Simons
Sorry, this got hung up in my email outbox. I see the thread has
touched on this idea in the meantime. So, yeah. Go team.
Brendan
--
Brendan Simons
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