Okay, thanks... Still trying to wrap my fragile little VBA-corrupted brain around names, namespaces, and objects. Progress is being made.
For me, the naive idea of variable ==> label for bin has been hard to get past simply because someone in the the back of my head is screaming, "Wait, if the VARIABLE doesn't point to a memory address, (somewhere down the implementation stack) whatinthehell does??" Further reading clarifies: For object X, id(X) is an immutable attribute reference that can ultimately be bound to a memory address (he said, blithely skipping over several layers of architecture...) So, okay, now I can relax. To oversimplify (told you VBA warped my mind) everything in python is an object (at some level). At minimum, all objects have an identity-- id(X), a type which subclasses and extends it from object, and some content, the nature of which depends on the object type. Once I got my head around the idea that there was something that was a fixed point of reference for the object, nevermind what, then I could relax and get on with get on with getting my head around names and namespaces. Thanks for listening to me ramble. On 1/7/09, Steve Holden <st...@holdenweb.com> wrote: > > Dan Esch wrote: > > Wait a sec... > > > > I think I get this... > > > > In essence, the implication of immutability for Python is that there is > > only one "parrot", one "spam,"in fact one anything. (This seems like it > > must hold for data primitives - does it hold for complex objects as > > well? It seems it must...) In addition there is only one 1, and one 2 > > etc. We may or may not have realized that string in a memory address to > > which variable names can be bound, but should we do so, there is only > > one "parrot" > > > > Python, is in fact, a Platonic programming language. Weird. If I've > > got this right, worth chewing on.... > > > 'Fraid not. Certain immutables are cached by the interpreter, but most > are not. > > >>> s1 = "a" + "b" + "c" > >>> n = 12345 > >>> s2 = "ab" + chr(99) > >>> m = 2469 * 5 > >>> s1 == s2 > True > >>> s1 is s2 > False > >>> n == m > True > >>> n is m > False > >>> id(s1), id(s2), id(n), id(m) > (2146661888, 2146661792, 14453620, 14453584) > >>> > > regards > Steve > -- > Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 > Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ > > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list >
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