Need help with Python scoping rules

[kj]

In <mailman.415.1251250004.2854.python-list at python.org> Dave Angel <davea at ieee.org> writes:

>Stephen Fairchild wrote:
>> You are trying to run code in a class that does not exist yet. 
>>
>> def Demo():
>>     def fact(n):
>>         if n < 2:
>>             return 1
>>         else:
>>             return n * fact(n - 1)
>>     return type("Demo", (object,), {"fact": staticmethod(fact), "_classvar":
>> fact(5)})
>> Demo = Demo()
>>
>> d = Demo()
>> print d._classvar    # prints 120
>> print d.fact(7)      # prints 5040
>> print Demo           # prints <class '__main__.Demo'>
>>
>>   
>In all these messages, something I haven't seen pointed out is that 
>fact() has no self argument.  Seems to me that makes it a staticmethod, 
>so it should be declared that way.

No, the fact() function here represents an internal "helper"
function.  It is meant to be called only once to help initialize
a class variable that would be inconvenient to initialize otherwise;
this helper function is not meant to be called from outside the
class statement.  Granted, in the example I gave, the "helper"
function (factorial) is a bit silly, but that was just intended as
a simple and familiar example of a recursive function.  The actual
function that motivated this post would be considerably more
difficult to explain and would have obscured the point of the post.

kynn