On 4/14/07, Mike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > While trying to write a recursive function involving lists, I came > across some (to me) odd behavior which I don't quite understand. Here's > a trivial function showing the problem.
from http://docs.python.org/ref/function.html : Default parameter values are evaluated when the function definition is executed. This means that the expression is evaluated once, when the function is defined, and that that same ``pre-computed'' value is used for each call. This is especially important to understand when a default parameter is a mutable object, such as a list or a dictionary: if the function modifies the object (e.g. by appending an item to a list), the default value is in effect modified. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
