dave em writes: > He is asking a question I am having trouble answering which is how a > variable containing a value differs from a variable containing a > list or more specifically a list reference.
My quite serious answer is: not at all. In particular, a list is a value. All those pointers to references to locations are implementation details. The user of the language needs to understand that an object keeps its identity when it's passed around: passed as an argument, returned by a function, stored in whatever location, retrieved from whatever location. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list