An identifier occurring as an atom is a reference to a local, global or built-in name binding. If a name is assigned to anywhere in a code block (even in unreachable code), and is not mentioned in a global statement in that code block, then it refers to a local name throughout that code block. When it is not assigned to anywhere in the block, or when it is assigned to but also explicitly listed in a global statement, it refers to a global name if one exists, else to a built-in name (and this binding may dynamically change).5.1
When the name is bound to an object, evaluation of the atom yields that object. When a name is not bound, an attempt to evaluate it raises a NameError exception.
Private name mangling: when an identifier that textually occurs in a class definition begins
with two or more underscore characters and does not end in two or more
underscores, it is considered a private name of that class.
Private names are transformed to a longer form before code is
generated for them. The transformation inserts the class name in
front of the name, with leading underscores removed, and a single
underscore inserted in front of the class name. For example, the
identifier __spam
occurring in a class named Ham
will be
transformed to _Ham__spam
. This transformation is independent
of the syntactical context in which the identifier is used. If the
transformed name is extremely long (longer than 255 characters),
implementation defined truncation may happen. If the class name
consists only of underscores, no transformation is done.