What is the Python equivalent of static variables inside a function?

Question

What is the idiomatic Python equivalent of this C/C++ code?

void foo()
{
    static int counter = 0;
    counter++;
          


        

Answer 1

Sure this is an old question but I think I might provide some update.

It seems that the performance argument is obsolete. The same test suite appears to give similar results for siInt_try and isInt_re2. Of course results vary, but this is one session on my computer with python 3.4.4 on kernel 4.3.01 with Xeon W3550. I have run it several times and the results seem to be similar. I moved the global regex into function static, but the performance difference is negligible.

isInt_try: 0.3690
isInt_str: 0.3981
isInt_re: 0.5870
isInt_re2: 0.3632

With performance issue out of the way, it seems that try/catch would produce the most future- and cornercase- proof code so maybe just wrap it in function