dynamic scope

dynamic scope

(language)In a dynamically scoped language, e.g. mostversions of Lisp, an identifier can be referred to, notonly in the block where it is declared, but also in anyfunction or procedure called from within that block, even ifthe called procedure is declared outside the block.

This can be implemented as a simple stack of (identifier,value) pairs, accessed by searching down from the top of stackfor the most recent instance of a given identifier.

The opposite is lexical scope. A common implementation ofdynamic scope is shallow binding.