On Mon, Sep 4, 2017 at 12:05 PM, Steve D'Aprano <steve+pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 04:15 am, Stephan Houben wrote: > >> Needless to say, according to the definition in Plotkin's paper, Python >> is "call-by-value". > > According to Plotkin's definition, when you pass a value like a 100MB string: > > "This is a long string of text..." # continues on for millions more > characters > > does the interpreter make a copy of the 100MB string? > > If not, then it isn't pass (call) by value.
This is another proof that you can't divide everything into "pass by value" vs "pass by reference", unless you mess around with "passing a reference by value" or other shenanigans. In C, a string is not an entity; it's simply an array of characters. Arrays are never passed by value; yet everything in C is passed by value. So you pass a pointer... by value. What would you define LISP's semantics as? Pass by value? Pass by reference? Pass by name? Pass by immutability? Pass the salt? ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
