Programming Languages: Concepts and Implementation

6.8 Comparison of Static and Dynamic Scoping

It is important to remember the meaning of static and dynamic scoping: The declarations to which references are bound are determinable before or at run-time, respectively. The specifics of how those associations are made before or during runtime (e.g., the lexical structure of the program vis-à-vis the run-time call chain) can vary.

Lexical scoping is a more bounded method of resolving references to declarations than is dynamic scoping. The location of the declaration to which any reference to a lexically scoped variable is bound is limited to the nested blocks surrounding the block containing the reference. By comparison, the location of the declaration to which any reference to a dynamically scoped ...