Question

Is there a difference between these two location of a decorator ?

def a():
    @decorator_function # HERE
    def b():
        pass
    return b

@decorator_function # OR HERE ?
c = a()

Answer 1

As BrenBren said, your code doesn’t work. In any case, first, decorator syntax is just syntactical sugar.

@deco
def func():
    pass

is equivalent to

def func():
    pass
func = deco(func)

So even assuming correct syntax, the first example is decorating the enclosed function b() while the second would be decorating the closure a(). So:

@deco
def a():
    def b():
        pass

is the same as

def a():
    def b():
        pass
a = deco(a)

and

def a():
    @deco
    def b():
        pass

is the same as

def a():
    def b():
        pass
    b = deco(b)