zsh - How do I make local variables available to inner functions that are not defined with 'eval'?

Question

I have a zsh function that looks like this:

outer_func () {
    local LOCAL_VAR='test'
    inner_func () {
        echo "${LOCAL_VAR}"
    }
}

where $LOCAL_VAR is not available to inner_func.

I know that I can use eval to define inner_func so that it can access the value of $LOCAL_VAR, I wonder if there's another way to do it?

Edit: test on zsh 5.8:

$ cat test.zsh
outer_func () {
    local LOCAL_VAR='test'
    inner_func () {
        echo "${LOCAL_VAR}"
    }
}

echo 'executing outer_func'
outer_func
echo 'executing inner_func'
inner_func

$ ./test.zsh
executing outer_func
executing inner_func

$

Edit 2: Clarification: I actually use outer_func to set variables to a series of inner_funcs which are essential for the inner_funcs to work, and after the definition of outer_func, I need to call the inner_funcs.

Answer 1

There is no such thing as an "inner function" in Zsh. What your outer_func does is, each time it gets called, it creates a normal function inner_func that is publicly available (and which will overwrite any existing function called inner_func). However, your outer_func does not actually call inner_func. It merely creates it.

What you probably want is this:

outer_func () {
  local LOCAL_VAR='test'
  inner_func
}

inner_func () {
  echo "${LOCAL_VAR}"
}

Then, when you call outer_func, the result will be that inner_func echoes test.

---

PS: You don’t need to use a local variable there. You can just use positional parameters instead:

outer_func() {
  inner_func 'test'
}

inner_func() {
  print - "$1"
}