python中函数的好处_在python中的函数中定义函数有什么好处？

我在effbot上遇到了这段python代码（粘贴在下面），我想知道：

为什么要在函数中定义函数？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)