* Stephen Hansen -> Alf P. Steinbach:
[snip]
To say, "pass by value" implies things to people. It describes a sort of
world where I'm a function about to do some work, and on my desk I have
a series of boxes with names on it. It describes an environment where
someone comes over and drops something into each of my boxes. The
contents of these boxes are mine alone!
Then, when the imprecision makes people misunderstand, one should not say that.
One should then be more precise.
One should say /what/ is passed by value.
[snip]
>>> import copy
>>> def doit(a):
... a += a
... return a
...
>>> test1 = 1
>>> test2 = doit(test1)
>>> test1
1
>>> test2
2
>>> test3 = [1]
>>> test4 = doit(test3)
>>> test3
[1, 1]
>>> test4
[1, 1]
I know you already know this, but the point is: you're -hurting- other
peoples understanding by using terms like this that don't apply to
Python's specific nature.
The terms apply very well to Java. And Java has the identical parameter passing
mechanism for class type objects. Hence, the argument is bogus.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
PS: I cannot see any of your postings on Usenet. So I just sort of grabbed this
from GMane and posted to Usenet. Hopefully you'll see it back at the list. :-)
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