Steven D'Aprano wrote:
The *name* "x" is an entity which is bound to (i.e. a reference to) the object 99, in some specific namespace, at some specific time. The name itself is an English word consisting of a single letter, "x".
This is one reason why the term "name" is not good subsitute for the term "variable". The string "x" is not the same thing as the variable x, a fact that's obscured if you call the variable a "name". A better analogy along the presidential line would be the name "President of the United States". That name can refer to different people at different times, so there must be some piece of state in the world that records the association between the character string "President of the United States" and the person who currently holds that office. It's that piece of state that the OP is calling a "box". I don't know what form it actually takes, probably an official piece of paper somewhere, which may well be kept in a box. But the box doesn't contain Barack Obama himself, it only contains something that refers to him. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
