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Non-local variables are the primary reason it is difficult to support nested, anonymous, higher-order and thereby first-class functions in a programming language. If the nested function or functions are (mutually) recursive, it becomes hard for the compiler to know exactly where on the call stack the non-local variable was allocated, as the frame pointer only points to the local variable of ...
Some languages allow variable shadowing in more cases than others. For example Kotlin allows an inner variable in a function to shadow a passed argument and a variable in an inner block to shadow another in an outer block, while Java does not allow these. Both languages allow a passed argument to a function/Method to shadow a Class Field.
Python sets are very much like mathematical sets, and support operations like set intersection and union. Python also features a frozenset class for immutable sets, see Collection types. Dictionaries (class dict) are mutable mappings tying keys and corresponding values. Python has special syntax to create dictionaries ({key: value})
In mathematics, a nonlocal operator is a mapping which maps functions on a topological space to functions, in such a way that the value of the output function at a given point cannot be determined solely from the values of the input function in any neighbourhood of any point. An example of a nonlocal operator is the Fourier transform.
Both these rules can be overridden with a global or nonlocal (in Python 3) declaration prior to use, which allows accessing global variables even if there is a masking nonlocal variable, and assigning to global or nonlocal variables. As a simple example, a function resolves a variable to the global scope: >>>
The term closure is often used as a synonym for anonymous function, though strictly, an anonymous function is a function literal without a name, while a closure is an instance of a function, a value, whose non-local variables have been bound either to values or to storage locations (depending on the language; see the lexical environment section below).
Example side effects include modifying a non-local variable, a static local variable or a mutable argument passed by reference; raising errors or exceptions; performing I/O; or calling other functions with side-effects. [1] In the presence of side effects, a program's behaviour may depend on history; that is, the order of evaluation matters.
In Python, if a name is intended to be "private", it is prefixed by one or two underscores. Private variables are enforced in Python only by convention. Names can also be suffixed with an underscore to prevent conflict with Python keywords. Prefixing with double underscores changes behaviour in classes with regard to name mangling.