TL;DR: This behaviour has existed since Python 2.1 PEP 227: Nested Scopes, and was known back then. If a name is assigned to within a class body (like y), then it is assumed to be a local/global variable; if it is not assigned to (x), then it also can potentially point to a closure cell. The lexical variables do not show up as local/global names to the class body.
On Python 3.4, dis.dis(func) shows the following:
>>> dis.dis(func)
4 0 LOAD_CONST 1 ('xlocal')
3 STORE_DEREF 0 (x)
5 6 LOAD_CONST 2 ('ylocal')
9 STORE_FAST 0 (y)
6 12 LOAD_BUILD_CLASS
13 LOAD_CLOSURE 0 (x)
16 BUILD_TUPLE 1
19 LOAD_CONST 3 (<code object C at 0x7f083c9bbf60, file "test.py", line 6>)
22 LOAD_CONST 4 ('C')
25 MAKE_CLOSURE 0
28 LOAD_CONST 4 ('C')
31 CALL_FUNCTION 2 (2 positional, 0 keyword pair)
34 STORE_FAST 1 (C)
37 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
40 RETURN_VALUE
The LOAD_BUILD_CLASS loads the builtins.__build_class__ on the stack; this is called with arguments __build_class__(func, name); where func is the class body, and name is 'C'. The class body is the constant #3 for the function func:
>>> dis.dis(func.__code__.co_consts[3])
6 0 LOAD_NAME 0 (__name__)
3 STORE_NAME 1 (__module__)
6 LOAD_CONST 0 ('func.<locals>.C')
9 STORE_NAME 2 (__qualname__)
7 12 LOAD_NAME 3 (print)
15 LOAD_CLASSDEREF 0 (x)
18 CALL_FUNCTION 1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
21 POP_TOP
8 22 LOAD_NAME 3 (print)
25 LOAD_NAME 4 (y)
28 CALL_FUNCTION 1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
31 POP_TOP
9 32 LOAD_CONST 1 (1)
35 STORE_NAME 4 (y)
38 LOAD_CONST 2 (None)
41 RETURN_VALUE
Within the class body, x is accessed with LOAD_CLASSDEREF (15) while y is load with LOAD_NAME (25). The LOAD_CLASSDEREF is a Python 3.4+ opcode for loading values from closure cells specifically within class bodies (in previous versions, the generic LOAD_DEREF was used); the LOAD_NAME is for loading values from locals and then globals. However closure cells show up neither as locals nor globals.
Now, because the name y is stored to within the class body (35), it is consistently being used as not a closure cell but a local/global name.
The closure cells do not show up as local variables to the class body.
This behaviour has been true ever since implementing PEP 227 – nested scopes. And back then BDFL stated that this should not be fixed – and thus it has been for these 13+ years.
The only change since PEP 227 is the addition of nonlocal in Python 3; if one uses it within the class body, the class body can set the values of the cells within the containing scope:
x = "xtop"
y = "ytop"
def func():
x = "xlocal"
y = "ylocal"
class C:
nonlocal y # y here now refers to the outer variable
print(x)
print(y)
y = 1
print(y)
print(C.y)
func()
The output now is
xlocal
ylocal
1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 15, in <module>
func()
File "test.py", line 13, in func
print(C.y)
AttributeError: type object 'C' has no attribute 'y'
That is, print(y) read the value of the cell y of the containing scope, and y = 1 set the value in that cell; in this case, no attribute was created for the class C.