Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:32:25 +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > >>> Rather it seems to me that the essence of the idea they had in mind >>> is that call-by-value is equivalent to assignment. >> >> You've just *assumed* that assignment in Algol 60 doesn't involving >> copying. Based on the very little I know about Algol, I think that is >> a very unsafe assumption. I know significantly more about Pascal, and >> in Pascal, assignment *is* copying. >> >> (I wait now with bated breath for somebody to point out some Python >> implementation or feature where assignment doesn't make a copy...) > > Ah crap, I meant *Pascal*. Python of course doesn't copy objects when > you assign them. > > I think you meant "Python of course doesn't copy objects when you rebind names". Python can (and sometimes does) make copies of objects when you assign them, , but only if the assignment involves something other than simply rebinding a name. e.g.
a[:] = [1, 2, 3] -- Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
