[Python-Dev] PEP 558: Defined semantics for locals()

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Sat, May 25, 2019, 07:38 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> This looks great.
>
> I only have two nits with the text.
>
> First, why is the snapshot called a "dynamic snapshot"? What exactly is
> dynamic about it?
>

It's dynamic in that it can spontaneously change when certain other events
happen. For example, imagine this code runs at function scope:

# take a snapshot
a = locals()

# it's a snapshot, so it doesn't include the new variable
assert "a" not in a

# take another snapshot
b = locals()

# now our first "snapshot" has changed
assert "a" in a

Overall I'm happy with the PEP, but I'm still a bit uneasy about whether
we've gotten the details of this "dynamicity" exactly right, esp. since the
PEP promotes them from implementation detail to language features. There
are a lot of complicated tradeoffs so I'm working on a longer response that
tries to lay out all the options and hopefully convince myself (and
everyone else).

-n
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