On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Greg Ewing wrote: > > Before it is reasonable to change the meaning of "global", we would > > need to have coherent answers to these questions: > > > > 1. What is the global namespace? > > Under the proposal, there is no such thing as > "the" global namespace, so the question is > meaningless. > > There's no such thing now, either -- there > are just (multiple) module-level namespaces.
Okay... tell that to all the writers of Python books and webpages that mention "the global namespace". Should we remove any occurrences of this phrase from the official Python documentation as well? > > either you have > > to say (#1) there is no longer such a thing as "the global namespace", > > As I said, there isn't one now. Which namespace > is "the global namespace" depends on which module > you're looking from. Under the proposal, it would > depend on which scope you're looking from. No -- it's much worse than that. That's the problem: even if you know which scope you're looking from, you wouldn't be able to point to anything and say "that's the global namespace". If we repurpose "global" to mean "nonlocal", the declaration "global a, b, c" might mean that a, b, and c all belong to different namespaces. Right now, in any given context, "the global namespace" has a clear meaning: the namespace shared by the whole file. With the new meaning of the "global" keyword, "global namespace" becomes meaningless no matter what the context. In Python, the concepts of "global", "global variable", and "global namespace" are too well established to destroy. -- ?!ng _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
