This is an annoying behaviour, but it is consistent with Python's design . It is not exactly caused by broken closure, rather by the object model of python, and

This is an annoying behaviour, but it is consistent with Python's design . It is not exactly caused by broken closure, rather by the object model of python, and how named are bounds to objects. While this does not make it less annoying, it explains why the difference between using x vs x.val is logical from python POV.