same context functions

[Gribouillis]

but nearly all of them involve a number of variables in the local context, such as emulating a terminal screen.

Again, the normal pythonic solution is to use instance variables and not variables in the local context. For example

class CookingPot:
    pass

def my_func(lines):
    pot = CookingPot()
    for line in lines:
        for c in line:
            if c == 'a':
                pot.spam = 'foo'
            elif c == 'b':
                pot.spam = 'bar'
            elif c == 'c':
                bacon(pot)

def bacon(pot):
    pot.spam = 'qux'

Also remember that the mapping returned by locals() is not writable.