Okay, bear with me on this, I know it's going to look horribly convoluted, but please help me understand what's happening.
from functools import partial
class Cage(object):
def __init__(self, animal):
self.animal = animal
def gotimes(do_the_petting):
do_the_petting()
def get_petters():
for animal in ['cow', 'dog', 'cat']:
cage = Cage(animal)
def pet_function():
print "Mary pets the " + cage.animal + "."
yield (animal, partial(gotimes, pet_function))
funs = list(get_petters())
for name, f in funs:
print name + ":",
f()
Gives:
cow: Mary pets the cat.
dog: Mary pets the cat.
cat: Mary pets the cat.
So basically, why am I not getting three different animals? Isn't the cage
'packaged' into the local scope of the nested function? If not, how does a call to the nested function look up the local variables?
I know that running into these kind of problems usually means one is 'doing it wrong', but I'd like to understand what happens.
The nested function looks up variables from the parent scope when executed, not when defined.
The function body is compiled, and the 'free' variables (not defined in the function itself by assignment), are verified, then bound as closure cells to the function, with the code using an index to reference each cell.
pet_function
thus has one free variable (cage
) which is then referenced via a closure cell, index 0. The closure itself points to the local variablecage
in theget_petters
function.When you actually call the function, that closure is then used to look at the value of
cage
in the surrounding scope at the time you call the function. Here lies the problem. By the time you call your functions, theget_petters
function is already done computing it's results. Thecage
local variable at some point during that execution was assigned each of the'cow'
,'dog'
, and'cat'
strings, but at the end of the function,cage
contains that last value'cat'
. Thus, when you call each of the dynamically returned functions, you get the value'cat'
printed.The work-around is to not rely on closures. You can use a partial function instead, create a new function scope, or bind the variable as a default value for a keyword parameter.
Partial function example, using
functools.partial()
:Creating a new scope example:
Binding the variable as a default value for a keyword parameter:
There is no need to define the
scoped_cage
function in the loop, compilation only takes place once, not on each iteration of the loop.This stems from the following
after iterating the value of
i
is lazily stored as its final value.As a generator the function would work (i.e. printing each value in turn), but when transforming to a list it runs over the generator, hence all calls to
cage
(cage.animal
) return cats.My understanding is that cage is looked for in the parent function namespace when the yielded pet_function is actually called, not before.
So when you do
You generate 3 functions which will find the lastly created cage.
If you replace your last loop with :
You will actually get :