python中使用函数的优点_在python中定义函数的好处是什么？

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

Why defining a function within a function?

import re, htmlentitydefs

##

# Removes HTML or XML character references and entities from a text string.

#

# @param text The HTML (or XML) source text.

# @return The plain text, as a Unicode string, if necessary.

def unescape(text):

def fixup(m):

text = m.group(0)

if text[:2] == "":

# character reference

try:

if text[:3] == "":

return unichr(int(text[3:-1], 16))

else:

return unichr(int(text[2:-1]))

except ValueError:

pass

else:

# named entity

try:

text = unichr(htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint[text[1:-1]])

except KeyError:

pass

return text # leave as is

return re.sub("(?s)<[^>]*>|?\w+;", fixup, text)

解决方案Why defining a function within a function?

To keep it isolated. It's only used in this one place. Why define it more globally when it's used locally?