question about local function closures

[Russell Smith <russ.ls@...>]

hi,

i have a question about why locally defined functions behave as they
do in Lua 5.0. if i run the following snippet of code:

--- example 1 ---
helper = 1
function test()
	local helper = function()
		print (helper)
	end
	helper()
end
test()
---

a '1' is printed, indicating that inside the helper function the
helper variable is not picked up as part of helper's closure state.
however if i rewrite this function slightly, like this:

--- example 2 ---
helper = 1
function test()
	local helper
	helper = function()
		print (helper)
	end
	helper()
end
test()
---

then 'function: XXXXXXXX' is printed, indicating that now 'helper'
*is* part of the closure. my question is why these two examples should
be different - to my way of thinking "local a=b" and "local a; a=b"
should always be equivalent (and for me the first example should print
'function').

this code pattern is useful for recursive functions (calling helper
inside helper) and i use it all the time. anyway, there is probably a
good reason that i've overlooked why it is this way ... and of course
changing the language in a subtle way like this would introduce all
kinds of hard to find bugs in people's code :)

russ.

-- 
Russ Smith
http://www.q12.org/