[Python-Dev] issue5578 - explanation (original) (raw)

Maciej Fijalkowski fijall at gmail.com
Wed Apr 1 05:15:29 CEST 2009

So. The issue was closed and I suppose it was closed by not entirely understanding the problem (or I didn't get it completely).

The question is - what the following code should do?

def f(): a = 2 class C: exec 'a = 42' abc = a return C

print f().abc

(quick answer - on python2.5 it return 42, on python 2.6 and up it returns 2, the patch changes it to syntax error).

I would say that returning 2 is the less obvious thing to do. The reason why IMO this should be a syntax error is this code:

def f(): a = 2 def g(): exec 'a = 42' abc = a

which throws syntax error.

Cheers, fijal