On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:43:01 -0800, Aaron Brady wrote:
> I think one of the ideas we have trouble communicating is that [1, 2, 3] > and [4, 5, 6] can be the same object Not at the same time they can't. > (using '[:]='), but [1, 2, 3] and [1, 2, 3] don't have to be. I don't think this is hard to get across, if you think about objects. You have a list. It's like a box. That box can hold items 1, 2 and 3. You can replace those items with 4, 5 and 6, and it's still the same box. Likewise, you can have a box with items 1, 2 and 3 inside it, and a different box also with items 1, 2 and 3, and they're still different boxes. The only tricky thing is that items 1, 2 and 3 can be inside two different boxes at the same time. There's no obvious real world analogy to that without the boxes being nested. This ability for objects to be in two places at once (or even to be inside themselves!) is one of the few reasons why Python's use of references in the implementation needs to be mentioned. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
