dear pythoneers, i would be very gladly accept any commentaries about what this sentence, gleaned from http://celabs.com/python-3.1/reference/executionmodel.html, is meant to mean, or why gods have decided this is the way to go. i anticipate this guy named Kay Schluehr will have a say on that, or maybe even the BDFL will care to pronounce ``__builtins__`` the correct way to his fallovers, followers, and fellownerds::
The built-in namespace associated with the execution of a code block is actually found by looking up the name __builtins__ in its global namespace; this should be a dictionary or a module (in the latter case the module’s dictionary is used). By default, when in the __main__ module, __builtins__ is the built-in module builtins; when in any other module, __builtins__ is an alias for the dictionary of the builtins module itself. __builtins__ can be set to a user-created dictionary to create a weak form of restricted execution. it used to be the case that there were at least two distinct terms, ‘builtin’ (in the singular) and ‘builtins’ (in the plural), some of which existed both in module and in dict form (?just guessing?). now there is only ‘builtins’, so fortunately the ambivalence between singular and plural has gone—good riddance. but why does ``__builtins__`` change its meaning depending on whether this is the scope of the ‘script’ (i.e. the module whose name was present, when calling ``python foobar.py``) or whether this is the scope of a secondary module (imported or executed, directly or indirectly, by ``foobar.py``)? i cannot understand the reasoning behind this and find it highly confusing. rationale: why do i care?—i want to be able to ‘export names to the global namespace that were not marked private (by an underscore prefix) in a python module that i execute via ``exec( compile( get ( locator ), locator, 'exec' ), R )`` where ``R`` is supposed to going to hold the private names of said module’. it *is* a little arcane but the basic exercise is to by-pass python’s import system and get similr results... it is all about injecting names into the all-global and the module-global namespaces. still i get trapped by the above wordings in tzhe docs, and i have a weird case of a vanishing names, so maybe some people will care to share their thoughts. love & ~flow thank -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
