Local inner functions in a prompt

[Eric Nielsen <eric@amalgamar.com.br>]

Hi all,

I'm aware of https://www.zsh.org/mla/users/2011/msg00207.html and that there's no such thing as an inner function.

But I'm surprised to see that if I declare "inner" functions inside a prompt function, they are not visible from "outside".

To reproduce this:

% cat <<'EOF' >prompt_outer_setup
prompt_outer_main() {
  local -i foo=1
  increment_foo() {
    (( foo++ ))
  }
  print_foo() {
    print -n ${foo}
  }
  inner1() {
    increment_foo
  }
  inner2() {
    increment_foo
  }
  inner1
  inner2
  print_foo
}
prompt_outer_setup() {
  PS1='$(prompt_outer_main)%# '
}
prompt_outer_setup
EOF
% fpath+=(${PWD})
% autoload -Uz promptinit && promptinit
% prompt outer
3%  print ${+functions[prompt_outer_setup]}
1
3%  print ${+functions[prompt_outer_main]}
1
3%  print ${+functions[increment_foo]}
0
3%  print ${+functions[print_foo]}
0
3%  print ${+functions[inner1]}
0
3%  print ${+functions[inner2]}
0
3%

As you can see only the "outer" functions prompt_outer_setup and prompt_outer_main are declared in the functions array. And the "inner" functions can access the local variable from the "outer" function, and an "inner" function can call other "inner" functions.

Is this scenario causing an unexpected behavior in Zsh, or is it really possible to create "inner" functions for prompts?

Kind regards,
Eric