Scope order: local vs argument

Question

Hi,
According to http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec09af4 -7fdf.html, LOCAL variables take precedence to ARGUMENTS variables.  However, when I access an unscoped variable in a CFC function that is available in both LOCAL and ARGUMENTS, I get back the ARGUMENTS scope.  Why is that?  I am using CF 9,0,0,251028.
<cfcomponent>
    <cffunction name="testFunction" access="public" returntype="string">
        <cfargument name="x" default="argument">
        <cfset LOCAL.x = "local">
        <cfreturn x />
    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>
<cfset obj = createObject( "component", "component.Test" )>
<cfoutput>#obj.testFunction("argument")#</cfoutput>
The output I get back is "argument" instead of "local".
The other thing that I find weird is that if I replace
<cfset LOCAL.x = "local">
with
<cfset var x = "var">
I get the error message "X is already defined in argument scope".

Answer 1

Hmm, I have never heard of the "local" scope. Are you sure the doc is not referring to <cfset var x = "local" /> as being a local variable? Try changing your example to the following:
    <cffunction name="testFunction" access="public" returntype="string">
        <cfargument name="x" default="argument" />
        <cfset var x = "local" />
        <cfreturn x />
    </cffunction>