Scopes and name resolution

Do you remember when we talked about scopes and namespaces in the first chapter? We're going to expand on that concept now. Finally, we can talk about functions and this will make everything easier to understand. Let's start with a very simple example.

scoping.level.1.py

def my_function():
    test = 1 # this is defined in the local scope of the function
    print('my_function:', test)

test = 0  # this is defined in the global scope
my_function()
print('global:', test)

I have defined the name test in two different places in the previous example. It is actually in two different scopes. One is the global scope (test = 0), and the other is the local scope of the function my_function (test = 1). If you execute the code, you'll see this:

$ python scoping.level.1.py
my_function: 1
global: 0

It's clear that test = 1 shadows the assignment test = 0 in my_function. In the global context, test is still 0, as you can see from the output...