On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 12:31 AM Michael Torrie <torr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 5/24/21 8:24 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: > > On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 12:18 AM hw <h...@adminart.net> wrote: > >> There are more alternatives: Python might create a new variable with > >> the same name and forget about the old one. Or it doesn't forget about > >> the old one and the old one becomes inaccessible (unless you have a > >> reference to it, if there is such a thing in python). How do you call > >> that? > > > > It's the latter option: create a new variable, and the old one becomes > > inaccessible. That's called "shadowing". It's how scoping works in > > most languages (called "lexical scope"). > > Is it really shadowing, though? The old one is not only inaccessible, > it's possibly reaped by the garbage collector, no? Both nums are in the > same scope so the one overwrote the other in the name table. Or am I > missing something. >
We're talking about many different things. If it's simply "num = ..." followed by "num = ...", then it's not a new variable or anything, it's simply rebinding the same name. But when you do "int = ...", it's shadowing the builtin name. But the rules are very close to the same in most modern high level languages. There are some small differences (eg Python doesn't have sub-function scope, but C-like languages can do that; JavaScript kinda does and kinda doesn't, because JavaScript), but by and large, the same rules apply. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
