Coding Style: Defining Functions within Methods?

[Eddie Corns]

harry.pehkonen at hotpop.com (Harry Pehkonen) writes:

>I have been defining new class methods when I'm trying to simplify
>some code.  But I'm thinking I should just define functions within
>that method because they aren't useful from the outside anyway. 
>Example:


>Before:

>class Mess(object):
>    def complicated(self, count):
>        for i in count:
>            self.do_loop(i)
>    def do_loop(self, i):
>        ...whatever...


>After:

>class Cleaner(object):
>    def complicated(self, count):
>        def do_loop(i)
>            ...whatever...
>        for i in count:
>            do_loop(i)

>The point is that do_loop is now not ``contaminating'' things.  I
>suppose do_loop could be __do_loop, but it would still show up in
>places where I don't think it should (such as dir(Mess)).

>Thoughts?

Definitely useful, especially as the inner function can see the same variables
as the outer (though I do keep getting bitten when I expect to be able update
variables).

Eddie