Explanation of this Python language feature? [x for x in x for x in x] (to flatten a nested list)

[vasudevram]

Hi list,

Can anyone - maybe one of the Python language core team, or someone with knowledge of the internals of Python - can explain why this code works, and whether the different occurrences of the name x in the expression, are in different scopes or not? :

x = [[1,2], [3,4], [5,6]]
    [x for x in x for x in x]

I saw this on a Hacker News thread about Python, and here is a post I wrote that gives more details about it, including relevant links, how I found that it can be extended to a triply-nested list, and my thoughts about the scope issue:

http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/03/flatten-list-of-lists-with-list.html

A few people commented about it, both on my blog, and on the Python Reddit where I also submitted my post, but I'm not sure I'm convinced of their reasoning or understand it, hence posting the question here.

Thanks,
Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com
jugad2.blogspot.com