[Python-ideas] A comprehension scope issue in PEP 572

[Tim Peters]

[Guido]
>> So the way I envision it is that *in the absence of a nonlocal or global
>> declaration in the containing scope*, := inside a comprehension or genexpr
>> causes the compiler to assign to a local in the containing scope, which is
>> elevated to a cell (if it isn't already). If there is an explicit nonlocal
>> or global declaration in the containing scope, that is honored.

[Juancarlo Añez <apalala at gmail.com>]
> This seems to be getting awfully complicated. Proof? Try to write the docs
> for the proposed semantics.

Implementation details - even just partial sketches - are always
"busy".  Think of it this way instead:  it's _currently_ the case that
listcomps & genexps run in a scope S that's the same as the scope C
that contains them, _except_ that names appearing as `for` targets are
local to S.  All other names in S resolve to exactly the same scopes
they resolved to in C (local in C, global in C, nonlocal in C -
doesn't matter).

What changes now?  Nothing in that high-level description, except that
a name appearing as a binding expression target in S that's otherwise
unknown in C establishes that the name is local to C.  That's nothing
essentially new, though - bindings _always_ establish scopes for
otherwise-unknown names in Python.


> I don't understand why we went so astray from the original requirements,
> which could all be met by having `if` and `while` accept `as` to bind an
> expression to a variable that would be local to the structured statement.

"Original" depends on when you first jumped into this ;-)