bug #39257: handles to nested functions are not yet supported

[Christian Himpe]

Dear developers,

the bug #39257: "handles to nested functions are not yet supported",

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=39257

including closures from nested function (returning handles of nested
functions), are somewhat important to me. But the partial patch in the
bug report is not applicable any longer due to other changes in the code
base.
Is this a bug that will be handled before Octave 4.4? I would
appreciate a rough explanation of the difficulties with this bug. Are
there particular road blocks for this bug? That need to be solved first?

To currently emulate this functionality I have local functions, and
the file's "main" function returns a handle to anonymous functions
calling these local functions. This involves long argument lists for
the local function and it would be significantly more readable if a
nested function could be used. Could this functionality internally be
handled similarly even if it would not be as efficient?

Thank you for your input

Christian

-- 
Christian Himpe
Computational Methods in Systems and Control Theory
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Sandtorstr. 1
D-39106 Magdeburg
Germany