gh-91362: reword pickle docs to account for nested classes (#92429)

Fixes #91362

diff --git a/Doc/library/pickle.rst b/Doc/library/pickle.rst
index fa14b64027e8fee1de63d3c7155a0287e7b6e931..41b0f48f4611da0ed0b9048b441b8c56b199b9b8 100644 (file)
--- a/Doc/library/pickle.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/pickle.rst
@@ -502,10 +502,10 @@ The following types can be pickled:
 
 * tuples, lists, sets, and dictionaries containing only picklable objects;
 
-* functions (built-in and user-defined) defined at the top level of a module
-  (using :keyword:`def`, not :keyword:`lambda`);
+* functions (built-in and user-defined) accessible from the top level of a
+  module (using :keyword:`def`, not :keyword:`lambda`);
 
-* classes defined at the top level of a module;
+* classes accessible from the top level of a module;
 
 * instances of such classes whose the result of calling :meth:`__getstate__`
   is picklable  (see section :ref:`pickle-inst` for details).
@@ -517,9 +517,9 @@ structure may exceed the maximum recursion depth, a :exc:`RecursionError` will b
 raised in this case.  You can carefully raise this limit with
 :func:`sys.setrecursionlimit`.
 
-Note that functions (built-in and user-defined) are pickled by fully qualified
-name, not by value. [#]_  This means that only the function name is
-pickled, along with the name of the module the function is defined in.  Neither
+Note that functions (built-in and user-defined) are pickled by fully
+:term:`qualified name`, not by value. [#]_  This means that only the function name is
+pickled, along with the name of the containing module and classes.  Neither
 the function's code, nor any of its function attributes are pickled.  Thus the
 defining module must be importable in the unpickling environment, and the module
 must contain the named object, otherwise an exception will be raised. [#]_