[Python-Dev] replacing 'global'

[Alex Martelli]

On Sunday 26 October 2003 04:46 pm, Aahz wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2003, Alex Martelli wrote:
   ...
> > nonexistent.  It would also make it most effective because it always
> > means the same thing -- "assignment to (already-existing) nonlocal".
   ...
> Sounds good to me.  Question: what does this do?
>
>     def f():
>         def g(x):
>             z := x
   ...
> That is, in the absence of a pre-existing binding, where does the
> binding for := go?  I think it should be equivalent to global, going to
> the module scope.

I think it should raise some subclass of NameError, because it's
not an assignment to an _already-existing_ nonlocal, as per my
text quoted above.  It does not seem to me that "nested functions
able to rebind module-level names" has compelling use cases, so
I would prefer the simplicity of forbidding this usage.


Alex