While working on a script I encountered an issue with setopt. Since I was setting and unsetting an option multiple times I placed both in a functions to mostly get rid of the extra typing. But as some may already guessed, that didn't work. So looked at man zshall. Nothing jumped out. Google here I come. Eventually found this where Stéphane Chazelas wrote: (note that zsh only implements local scope for variables and options, not for functions, aliases...) This eventually got me to "emulate -L zsh" which is what I had at the top of my script. That led to "local_options". Found what caused the issue. To the point/question: Should zshoptions man page have a clear statement at the very beginning that "options" can have a local "scope"? "Scope" is only mentioned later in in three options. This on my part is assuming "scope" is the correct word to use here. FWIW, the "emulate builtin" references the three options (local_optioon, local_patterns and local_traps) but only two backreference emulate, local_traps does not. Thanks for listening. Jim Murphy Working with Unix/Linux for 40 years, so man pages have a love/hate relationship for me. Never clear enough or enough GOOD examples in them. That said the zsh man pages are good, but not perfect or as clear as they could be in all cases. Thanks to all who have made them as good as they are.