[Python-ideas] Jump to function as an an alternative to call function

[Jonathan Fine]

Hi Chris

Steve and you wrote:

>> there
>> are times where I have really wanted to access the caller's environment,
>> not the environment where my function was defined.

> what am I missing? can't you get that by passing locals() in to a function?

I think this will fail when values are changed. According to
https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#locals
> The contents of this dictionary should not be modified; changes may not affect the values of local and free variables used by the interpreter.

I suspect that Jacob, the original poster, wants to change state, and
also to read changed state.  Jacob, could you confirm or correct, that
you want the called function to be able to change state in caller (or
perhaps even further up the stack).

To finish, here's an interactive example of changing the value of locals().

>>> def f(a=1): loc = locals(); yield loc; yield a
>>> it = f()
>>> ctx = next(it)
>>> ctx
{'a': 1}  ## This surprised me.
>>>
>>>
>>> def f(a=1): loc = locals(); yield locals(); yield a
>>> it = f()
>>> ctx = next(it)
>>> ctx
{'a': 1, 'loc': {...}}
>>> ctx['a'] = 3
>>> ctx['loc']['a'] = 5
>>> next(it) ## Is it 1 or 3 or 5?
1  ## The value of 'a' hasn't changed.

-- 
Jonathan