Why read-only nested scopes?

[Andrew Koenig]

Gonçalo> Anyway, I've been directed to PEP 227, cheerfully obeyed, and
Gonçalo> from what I have understood having read-only nested scopes
Gonçalo> was more of a design decision than something else. And while
Gonçalo> I can live happily with the decision (some would even say
Gonçalo> happier) there is something about the "You can look at it but
Gonçalo> not touch it" attitude that I dislike ;-)

You can do anything to the object that the object support.
What you can't do is change the binding of the name.

    x = []
    def foo(y):
        x.append(y);
    foo(3)
    foo(4)
    foo(5)

After executing this code, x is [3, 4, 5].

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark