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[Python-Dev] [PEP 558] thinking through locals() semantics

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu May 30 20:22:57 EDT 2019 
On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 4:28 PM Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>
wrote:

> Nick Coghlan wrote:
> > So for me, getting rid of write backs via exec and "import *" was a
> > matter of "Yay, we finally closed those unfortunate loopholes" rather
> > than being any kind of regrettable necessity.
>
> If that were the reasoning, the principled thing to do would be
> to raise an exception if an eval or exec tries to write to a
> local, rather than mostly ignore it.
>
> In any case, I don't really agree with that philosophy. Python
> is at its essence a dynamic language. Things like JIT and static
> type analysis are only possible to the extent that you refrain
> from using some of its dynamic features. Removing features
> entirely just because they *can* interfere with these things goes
> against the spirit of the language, IMO.
>

Right. And static analysis should also be able to detect most uses of
locals() in a frame. I believe I've heard of some alternate Python
implementations that detect usage of some functions to disable some
optimizations (IIRC IronPython did this to sys._getframe()).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
*Pronouns: he/him/his **(why is my pronoun here?)*
<http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-singular-pronoun-can-change-the-world/>
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