[Tutor] Alan Gauld's tut - namespaces

[Kent Johnson]

Alan Gauld wrote:
> However I'll refrain from saying much more since I do think the
> namespaces topic could be significantly improved if only I could
> find better words and examples.

Hi Alan,

Looking at the tutorial, I think it jumps too quickly to more advanced 
material (multiple modules) before explaining the basics of how a name 
is resolved within a single module. You list the different scopes but 
you don't explain how they are searched for a name.

Once it is clear that names are searched in the *lexically* enclosing 
module, it will make more sense that print42() prints the value of spam 
in first.py.

It might help to talk about name binding explicitly - that importing a 
module binds a name to the module, and importing a function from the 
module binds a name to the function. This might help make the 
distinction that importing doesn't include anything new in the importing 
module, it just creates references to the imported module or its attributes.

You are missing a namespace, BTW. Since Python 2.1 the search order is 
local, *enclosing*, global and builtin.

Kent