> You should also think long and hard about *why* you want to return a > value from a function by modifying an input parameter instead of just > using the return statement. The "return by modifying an input parameter" > approach comes from C where that's the only way to return more than one > value from a function. In Python, no such crutch is necessary or > desirable. > Nobody mentioned the term for this. When a function changes its parameters or its environment, then it is called a "side effect" and generally it is considered harmful in all modern languages. ("Function" here refers to a piece of code that is used to calculate one or more values and provide these values to the caller.)
So you are trying to create a function that has a side effect. You should not do this, unless you have a really good reason. Regards, Laszlo -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list