Creating a local variable scope.

[Johan Grönqvist]

Hi All,

I find several places in my code where I would like to have a variable
scope that is smaller than the enclosing function/class/module definition.

One representative example would look like:

----------
spam = { ... }
eggs = { ... }

ham = (a[eggs], b[spam])
----------

The essence is that for readability, I want spam and eggs in separate
definitions, but for clarity, I would like to express the fact that they
are "local to the definition of ham", i.e., they are not used outside of
  the definition of ham.

The language reference at
<http://docs.python.org/reference/executionmodel.html> says that "The
following are blocks: a module, a function body, and a class
definition." (all other cases seem to refer to dynamic execution using
eval() or similar). Python 3 and 2.6 seem to have identical scope rules.

In the other languages I have used I can either use braces (C and
descendants) or use let-bindings (SML, Haskell etc.) to form local scopes.

Are there suggestions or conventions to maximize readability for these
cases in python? (Execution time is not important in the cases I
currently consider.)


Regards

Johan