Closure/binding problem or misunderstanding

Bob.Sidebotham

If I run the following code:

class path(object):
def __init__(self, **subdirs):
for name, path in subdirs.iteritems():
def getpath():
return path
setattr(self, name, getpath)

export = path(
one = 'this is one',
two = 'this is two',
)

print "invoking", export.one, export.one()
print "invoking", export.two, export.two()

I get this output:

invoking <function getpath at 0x400ded14this is one
invoking <function getpath at 0x400ded84this is one

So there apparently are two definitions of the function "getpath" (the
addresses are different, anyway), but they seem to have the same value
for the binding of "path". It's not clear to me, after reading what I
can find about python name binding, whether this is the expected
behavior, or not (although I was surprised).

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks,
Bob Sidebotham

Nov 9 '07 #1

Paul Hankin

On Nov 9, 2:32 pm, "Bob.Sidebot...@gmail.com"
<Bob.Sidebot...@gmail.comwrote:

If I run the following code:

class path(object):
def __init__(self, **subdirs):
for name, path in subdirs.iteritems():
def getpath():
return path
setattr(self, name, getpath)

export = path(
one = 'this is one',
two = 'this is two',
)

print "invoking", export.one, export.one()
print "invoking", export.two, export.two()

I get this output:

invoking <function getpath at 0x400ded14this is one
invoking <function getpath at 0x400ded84this is one

So there apparently are two definitions of the function "getpath" (the
addresses are different, anyway), but they seem to have the same value
for the binding of "path". It's not clear to me, after reading what I
can find about python name binding, whether this is the expected
behavior, or not (although I was surprised).

Clearly it wasn't the expected behaviour, or you wouldn't be
surprised :)

It's behaving as defined though, and the usual work-around is to add a
variable with a default value.

class path(object):
def __init__(self, **subdirs):
for name, path in subdirs.iteritems():
def getpath(path=path):
return path
setattr(self, name, getpath)

--
Paul Hankin

Nov 9 '07 #2

Bob.Sidebotham

On Nov 9, 9:49 am, Paul Hankin <paul.han...@gmail.comwrote:

It's behaving as defined though, and the usual work-around is to add a
variable with a default value.

class path(object):
def __init__(self, **subdirs):
for name, path in subdirs.iteritems():
def getpath(path=path):
return path
setattr(self, name, getpath)

Thanks, Paul. That's helpful. I will re-read the reference manual, and
see if I can find out where this behavior is defined. It looks like
it's binding both locals and globals, but not actually taking a
snapshot in time, as would, say Perl (I think). From an efficiency POV
this makes great sense, and I can see that you get everything you need
by essentially creating the closure yourself (by putting everything in
the local space for the function).

Bob

Nov 9 '07 #3