What is the Python equivalent of static variables inside a function?

Question

What is the idiomatic Python equivalent of this C/C++ code?

void foo()
{
    static int counter = 0;
    counter++;
          


        

Answer 1

def staticvariables(**variables):
    def decorate(function):
        for variable in variables:
            setattr(function, variable, variables[variable])
        return function
    return decorate

@staticvariables(counter=0, bar=1)
def foo():
    print(foo.counter)
    print(foo.bar)

Much like vincent's code above, this would be used as a function decorator and static variables must be accessed with the function name as a prefix. The advantage of this code (although admittedly anyone might be smart enough to figure it out) is that you can have multiple static variables and initialise them in a more conventional manner.