Update a "Programmer's note" about lambda forms and scoping to reflect

freddrake · freddrake · commit 88382696f482 · 2001-06-05T02:17:02.000Z
the availability of nested scoping in Python 2.1 and 2.2.
diff --git a/Doc/ref/ref5.tex b/Doc/ref/ref5.tex
@@ -869,17 +869,31 @@ \section{Boolean operations\label{Booleans}}
 \indexii{lambda}{form}
 \indexii{anonmymous}{function}
 
-\strong{Programmer's note:} a lambda form defined inside a function
-has no access to names defined in the function's namespace.  This is
-because Python has only two scopes: local and global.  A common
-work-around is to use default argument values to pass selected
-variables into the lambda's namespace, e.g.:
+\strong{Programmer's note:} Prior to Python 2.1, a lambda form defined
+inside a function has no access to names defined in the function's
+namespace.  This is because Python had only two scopes: local and
+global.  A common work-around was to use default argument values to
+pass selected variables into the lambda's namespace, e.g.:
 
 \begin{verbatim}
 def make_incrementor(increment):
     return lambda x, n=increment: x+n
 \end{verbatim}
 
+As of Python 2.1, nested scopes were introduced, and this work-around
+has not been necessary.  Python 2.1 supports nested scopes in modules
+which include the statement \samp{from __future__ import
+nested_scopes}, and more recent versions of Python enable nested
+scopes by default.  This version works starting with Python 2.1:
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+from __future__ import nested_scopes
+
+def make_incrementor(increment):
+    return lambda x: x+increment
+\end{verbatim}
+
+
 \section{Expression lists\label{exprlists}}
 \indexii{expression}{list}
 
