Paul Rubin wrote: > The symbols on the left side of = signs are called variables even in > Haskell, where they don't "vary" (you can't change the value of a > variable once you have set it).
FWIW, that's the original, mathematical meaning of the word 'variable'. They _do_ vary, but only when you call the function with different arguments (which happens frequently in Haskell, which uses recursion in place of loops). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
