Bruno Desthuilliers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The problem is that your formulation implies (to me at least) that the > variable is actually a kind of container for the object.
I really didn't expect it to be read that way, especially since the sentence claims that the same instance can reside in several variables. If the term variable implied containment, that would not be possible because different variables would imply different objects. To be fair, the OP probably *did* confuse variables with containment, and I rot13'ed my hack to avoid unnecessarily prolonging that confusion. However, I don't think his confusion is a consequence of inaccurate terminology, but of an inaccurate mental model of Python objects. When the mental model is correct, the term "variable" works as well as any other; when it's incorrect, using different words for the same thing is of little help. >>> Python's "variables" are name=>object bindings. >> >> No reason to use quotes. > > Yes, there's one : to mark the difference between Python-like > name=>object bindings and C-like labels-on-memory-address variables > the latter model being the most commonly known to beginners. Are you sure about the last part? It seems to me that in recent times more Python beginners come from a Java background than from a C one. In any case, "variable" is a sufficiently general concept not to be tied to a specific implementation. That the concept of variable differs among programming languages is for me not reason enough to eschew it. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
