Right, but I think it's categorically impossible to make that work reliably without new syntax and a name binding protocol (or something equivalent).

Due to the existence of the global keyword, the frame stack and normal assignment syntax simply don't provide adequate information for us to tell the difference between "incidental" assignments in a helper function and "definite assignments" that represent the ultimate destination.

And if the solution involves new syntax, then the frame hack will have to be deprecated at some point anyway.