Values and objects

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> But that is an implementation detail. IronPython and Jython use an
> ordinary dict for local variable namespaces, just like globals. Consider
> this example from Jython:
>
>>>> spam = 9999
>>>> def modify(namespace):
> ...     namespace['spam'] = 42
> ...
>>>> def demo():
> ...     modify(locals())
> ...     spam = spam
> ...     return spam
> ...
>>>> demo()
> 42

All you're proving here is that, in some Pythons, locals() is
writeable. What happens if you remove the "spam = spam" line? Would
demo() not then return spam from the global scope, because the
variable does not exist at local scope? Every example you've shown is
simply giving a value to something that you've created by the normal
method of having an assignment inside the function.

ChrisA