"Richard Blackwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Indeed, this language is math.
In mathematics, the word 'variable' is generally an undefined meta-term that is *notorious* for having multiple possible meanings and shades of meaning. One mathematician/linguist once claimed to have discerned somewhere around 15 different meanings and shades thereof. The context usually makes the particular meaning clear enough, at least to other mathematicians. But the ambiguity sometimes disconcerting to students. > My friend says that foo is a constant and necessarily not a variable. 'constant' is one of the possible meanings of 'variable'. As is "Given that (3*x -2)/5 = 1, what is the value of the variable x". Sometimes, whether a 'variable' actually 'varies' or not, is a matter of viewpoint. We may think of 'varying' as something that happens in time, whereas most math is timeless. In any case, 'foo=5' can be followed, in Python, by 'foo="hopscotch" '. So names (as opposed to objects) do not even have a type. Also, in Python, 'variable' is not a part of the official language description in the way it is for some other programming languages. Terry J. Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
