Thanks for your bug report. This is by design and has been the behaviour for as long as I can remember. As with most features, I cannot remember who requested a feature to work in a particular way or why they asked for it. However, as it took extra coding to make it work the way it currently works, I am guessing that someone specifically asked for it. As you know, I try not to change script-related features that may affect backward-compatibility, so this is not a behaviour that I would change.
