greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Seems to me that (1) describes exactly how parameter passing > works in Python. So why insist that it's *not* call by value?
Because there's an important distinction to be made, and the distinction has been written up in the Computer Science literature since Lisp first starting using the same argument passing semantics as Python back in 1958. The semantics are called "call by sharing". Many mainstream programming languages other than Python now use call by sharing. They include Java, JavaScript, Ruby, ActionScript, and C#. |>oug P.S. Lisp didn't call it "call by sharing" -- Lisp called it "binding". The designers of CLU invented the term "call by sharing" back in the 70s. (Or at least I believe they invented the term. They certainly did use the term.) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
