What is the benefit to define a function in a function in python?

Question

I encountered this piece of python code (pasted below) on effbot and I was wondering:

Why defining a function within a function?

import          


        

Answer 1

Often the main reason of such code is function closures. It is powerful thing that is applicable not only to Python. E.g. JavaScript gains a lot from them.

Some points about closures in Python - closures-in-python.