On Fri, 5 Jun 2015 08:59 am, random...@fastmail.us wrote: > On Thu, Jun 4, 2015, at 18:16, Steven D'Aprano wrote: >> Remember, you've tried to claim that it is not invisible or unknown, so >> you >> must be able to see and know that value. So what is the value? > > It doesn't have to have a string representation to exist. But if you > really want one? > >>>> object.__repr__(23) > '<int object at 0x10024af00>'
That's not a reference to the value. That's a string that describes the object. If it returned "twenty-three" would you claim that the string "twenty three" is the value of x? I think there is a simple, obvious, common-sense answer here: * given `x = 23`, the value of x is 23; * given `x = [1, 2]`, the value of x is the given list [1, 2]; * given `x = "Hello World", the value of x is the string "Hello World"; * given `x = object()`, the value of x is the given instance of type object. That's so simple and obviously correct. Compare to: * given `x = 23`, the value of x is not actually 23, but some invisible reference to 23; * given `x = [1, 2]`, the value of x is not actually [1, 2], but some invisible reference to [1, 2]; etc. I'm sure you can extrapolate to the other examples. The *only* reason for making this claim is to rationalise the belief that passing x to a function is pass by value. Since the list [1, 2] is obviously not copied, it becomes necessary to find something, anything, which *is* copied, and identify that as "the value of x". Is there any other context where you would want to say that the value of x isn't [1, 2]? -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
