Message 77703 - Python tracker (original) (raw)

I could argue either way on this one; it's true that deleting a nested-scope variable is sometimes desirable, but it also seems to me like closing over an except: variable is a Potentially Bad Idea.

In neither case, however, do I think it's appropriate to drop the temporary nature of the variable. I could perhaps get behind resetting the variable to None instead of deleting it, but of course the PEP would need changing. There's also a question of whether we should do the same thing with "with ... as" variables.

(Btw, I'm not sure why this one's assigned to me; ISTM I might have proposed the current except/as GC semantics, but I'm not familiar with the actual implementation in 2.6 or 3.0)