A newbie quesiton: local variable in a nested funciton

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 3:05 PM,  <jfong at ms4.hinet.net> wrote:
>> Python's flexibility and simplicity are a huge part of why I love the
>> language so much.
>
> simplicity? Maybe because you are soooo familiar with Python. It's not to me, at least at this moment. Please see my next question follows.
>

I define "simplicity" in terms of the number and complexity of the
rules you have to keep in your head. It's not necessarily the best
thing to do; for instance, a C-style #include directive is *extremely*
simple (it is literally "drop the file contents in at this location"),
but I prefer Python's semantics. On the other hand, PHP's include
directive is *not* simple; in many ways it behaves like C's #include,
but it can't be used inside class definitions, and if used in a
function, some of what it does is at top level and some is inside the
function.

Python's rules for imports (whether they're "import X" or "from X
import Y") include a somewhat complicated definition of search path,
but ultimately, it's a matter of hunting down a module and executing
it (all of it) in its own namespace, and then giving you a reference
to sys.modules["X"] (or sys.modules["X"].Y for a from-import).

ChrisA