[Python-Dev] Tangent on class level scoping rules (was Re: PEP 463: Exception-catching expressions)

[Eric Snow]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a relatively arcane scoping rule that only matters if you have
> non-trivial logic at class scope. The vast majority of Python
> programmers will never have to care, because they do the typical thing
> and their class bodies consist almost entirely of function definitions
> and relatively simple assignment statements.

That is definitely an esoteric corner.  It's only really bitten me
when I was doing stuff with nested classes [1] and mined too deeply.
Here's a simple example:

class Spam:
    class Ham:
        A = None
        B = None
    class Eggs:
        class Bacon(Ham):
             A = 3

If I recall correctly, Larry Hastings ran into something similar a while back.

-eric


[1] The nested classes were used just for easy-to-read namespaces,
effectively hijacking the class definition syntax with no intention of
actually using the class as a type.