On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:11:16 -0600, Robert Kern wrote about nested
functions:
> I, for one, find that significantly less clear. I only expect functions
> to be defined inside of functions if they are going to use lexical
> scoping for some reason. If I read your code, I'd probably waste a good
> five minutes trying to figure out what part of the local scope you were
> using before I would conclude that you just did it because you thought
> it looked better.
Hah, I bet you aren't an ex-Pascal programmer :-)
Speaking as one, it took me a long time to teach myself not to bother
nesting functions for the purpose of avoiding scoping clashes. I'd write
something like this:
def parrot():
def colour():
return "Blue"
return "Norwegian %s" % colour()
def cardinal(x):
def colour():
return "crimson"
return "Cardinal Fang wears a %s robe" % colour()
Except of course that's a trivially silly example. (For the sake of the
argument, let's pretend the two functions colour() do actual
calculations.)
These days, I'd write them something like this:
def parrot_colour():
return "Blue"
def cardinal_colour():
return "crimson"
def parrot():
return "Norwegian %s" % parrot_colour()
def cardinal(x):
return "Cardinal Fang wears a %s robe" % cardinal_colour()
These days, almost the only time I use nested functions is for function
factories.
--
Steven
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