coding style - where to declare variables

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 6:14 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> While FORTRAN or C couldn't operate on functions like this, an assembly
> language program could easily. Simply compose a CPU instruction sequence
> on the fly, mark it executable and use the "CALL" opcode to transfer
> control to your constructed function.

... right up until the point where you realize that this is a massive
security vulnerability, so you get a segmentation fault (or
"protection fault" under Windows) for trying to execute a
non-executable segment.

> In the same vein, you could understand the "def" statement as a runtime
> compiler that takes the function body, compiles it into machine language
> and assigns the start address to the given variable. In fact, that would
> be a perfectly working way to implement "def." Whether it would be a
> smart thing to do is a different question. Key is, though, that "def"
> always creates a new *data* object that can be called as *executable
> code*.

Here's a simpler way to describe it:

The 'def' statement creates a function and assigns it to the name given.

Tada! No need to talk about compilers and addresses and stuff, which
are utterly irrelevant in Python.

ChrisA