Disappearing global variables

[Andrei Kulakov]

Hello,

When I run book.read() method, instances that were in global namespace
disappear. I made a small function loc() that prints 0 if 'local' is in
global namespace (the name has nothing to do with namespaces - it just
means local list of books stored on hard drive). I run it right before
calling book.read() and it prints 1, I run it from inside book.read()
right after calling it, and it prints 0. I'm using python2.1.

def loc():
    print 'loc',
    print 'local' in globals().keys()

# method of Book class
    def read(self):
        """Read the book."""
        loc()
        arg = ""
        if self not in local.lst:
            # to scroll past gutenberg licence stuff..
            if viewer.endswith("vim"): 
                arg = "+/\*END\*"
            self.download()
        if last.lst and self != last.lst[-1]:
            last.compress()
        if self.gzip:
            self.uncompress()
        last.add(self)
        if viewer.endswith("vim"): 
            # -N not fully vi-compat; -u <vimrc> use vimrc
            arg = " -N -u %s %s " % (VIMRC, arg)
        os.system(viewer + arg + self.l_fname)

You can look at full program at silmarill.org/pybook/pybook.py - it's 
a little over 500 lines.

I have to say I'm really puzzled. Any hints?

 - Andrei

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