Dennis Lee Bieber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > In Python, the "variable" NAME does NOT define storage; unlike most > other classical languages where the "variable name" is a storage > address, and the value of the RHS is COPIED to that address. Python does > not do such copying. Names are references to the RHS object itself.
Right, but that's just like today's most popular languages -- Java and C# -- with the one difference that in those languages "boxed" types (elementary numbers, in Java) have different semantics. > Languages with "variable declarations" are pre-allocating object > space that can only hold objects of that type (ignoring VB "variant"). Again, this is not true for the most popular languages, Java and C# -- in those cases, excepting boxed types, variable declarations are "pre-allocating" space for references, which can refer to any type derived from theirs (so, e.g., in Java, "Object x;" means x can refer to anything at all except a boxed type such as float). I think you're confusing two issues with languages' underlying models: boxes (C, Fortran, etc) vs tags (Java, Python, etc) for variables; and declarations vs not. APL uses boxes but no declarations, etc, etc: you can find all four variants!-) Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
