[Python-ideas] Tweaking closures and lexical scoping to include the function being defined

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Tue Sep 27 16:57:33 CEST 2011


On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 12:09 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27 September 2011 05:12, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>> "our" is something in Perl, right? My proposal was "own", which is
>> much older (Algol-60). Probably nobody else here remembers it.
>
> I do :-)
>
> Not sure that Algol-60 using it is a good enough reason for
> recommending it, though. The name didn't make sense to me even back
> then... (Actually, after this discussion, the logic is clearer - so
> congratulations, Nick, for clarifying a 40-year old puzzle for me!)

In the days of Algol-60 they were pretty bad at explaining things. I
was puzzled by "own" as well. (However, the biggest mystery for me,
for a long time, were pointers in Pascal. It didn't clear up until I
learned assembly.)

> Call by name, anyone?

ABC, Python's predecessor, had it, IIRC.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)



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