On Jan 2, 5:43 pm, Steve Holden <st...@holdenweb.com> wrote: > Derek Martin wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 02:21:29PM +0000, John O'Hagan wrote: > [...] > > What the Python community often overlooks, when this discussion again > > rears its ugly head (as it seems to every other hour or so), is that > > its assignment model is BIZARRE, as in it's conceptually different > > from virtually all other languages substantially taught in > > undergraduate computer science programs. And for that matter, it's > > pretty unintuitive generally. > > I'd definitely argue against bizarre. It's actually very easy to > understand, and Python is by no means the only language to have used it.
A statement like f(x) = 1 has no meaning in most languages - including Python, C and Java. C++ references allows operator= to be overloaded. It is one of few languages where a statement like 'f(x) = 1;' maybe meaningful. But C++ references are addresses (pointers in disguise), not names. The = is Python's name binding operator. Python is similar to Java in this respect. If anything is bizarre here, it is C++ references. P.S. The C statement '*f(x) = 1;' does have meaning, but 'f(x) = 1;' do not. But in the former case, one is not assigning to the return value. Python and Java do not have raw pointers like C. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
