function prototyping?

[Duncan Booth]

Burton Samograd wrote:
> Is there any way to 'prototype' functions in python, as you would in
> C?  Would that be what the 'global' keyword is for, or is there a more
> elegant or 'pythonic' way of doing forward references?
> 
There isn't really such a thing as a forward reference in Python. Always 
remember that 'def' and 'class' are executable statements:

def a():
   b()

def b():
   print "b called"

a()

So long as you have executed both def statements before you call the first 
function it will find the second one. In the example above, if you called 
a() before executing 'def b()' the function 'b' wouldn't exist so you 
couldn't call it.