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authorMiss Islington (bot) <31488909+miss-islington@users.noreply.github.com>2024-05-20 18:11:36 (GMT)
committerGitHub <noreply@github.com>2024-05-20 18:11:36 (GMT)
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[3.12] DOCS: Suggest always calling exec with a globals argument and no locals argument (GH-119235) (#119240)
DOCS: Suggest always calling exec with a globals argument and no locals argument (GH-119235) Many users think they want a locals argument for various reasons but they do not understand that it makes code be treated as a class definition. They do not want their code treated as a class definition and get surprised. The reason not to pass locals specifically is that the following code raises a `NameError`: ```py exec(""" def f(): print("hi") f() def g(): f() g() """, {}, {}) ``` The reason not to leave out globals is as follows: ```py def t(): exec(""" def f(): print("hi") f() def g(): f() g() """) ``` (cherry picked from commit 7e1a130b8ff1ed8b3a5f00fe0f06d3916b852216) Co-authored-by: Hood Chatham <roberthoodchatham@gmail.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/library')
-rw-r--r--Doc/library/functions.rst10
1 files changed, 7 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/functions.rst b/Doc/library/functions.rst
index b314cb2..d8f65b0 100644
--- a/Doc/library/functions.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/functions.rst
@@ -604,9 +604,13 @@ are always available. They are listed here in alphabetical order.
will be used for both the global and the local variables. If *globals* and
*locals* are given, they are used for the global and local variables,
respectively. If provided, *locals* can be any mapping object. Remember
- that at the module level, globals and locals are the same dictionary. If exec
- gets two separate objects as *globals* and *locals*, the code will be
- executed as if it were embedded in a class definition.
+ that at the module level, globals and locals are the same dictionary.
+
+ .. note::
+
+ Most users should just pass a *globals* argument and never *locals*.
+ If exec gets two separate objects as *globals* and *locals*, the code
+ will be executed as if it were embedded in a class definition.
If the *globals* dictionary does not contain a value for the key
``__builtins__``, a reference to the dictionary of the built-in module