On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 11:11 PM, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Steve D'Aprano wrote: >> >> The third entity is the reference linking the name to the object (the >> arrow). >> This isn't a runtime value in Python, nor is it a compile time entity that >> exists in source code. It is pure implementation, and as such, exists >> outside >> of the Python domain. > > > The fact that there is a connection between the name and the > object is very much part of Python's abstract semantics. > > There are different ways to implement that connection, but > *any* implementation of Python has to include *some* > representation of it.
Sure. But let's suppose you're building a Python implementation on top of a language that has a perfectly good implementation of dict already built for you. Literally every other namespace can be represented with a dictionary, and the name:value association is that reference. Is the reference *itself* a runtime value? No; you can't pick it up and move it around - all you'll do is dereference it and get the value itself. (Or you'll work with the name, as a string. That can sometimes serve as a pseudo-reference.) Is it a compile time entity? Not directly (assignment statements imply them, but they aren't themselves the references). So Steve's comment is still correct. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
