* Steve Howell:
This thread is interesting on many levels. What is the core question that is being examined here?
I think that regarding the technical it is whether a Python name refers to an object or not. I maintain that it does, and that the reference can be copied, and that the semantics of the language requires this and is defined in terms of this. Steve Holden, D'Aprano and many others maintain that there are no references, or that if there are then they're only an implementation aspect, i.e. that conceiveable one could have an implementation without them.
Regarding some other issues it seems to be a childish exercise in flaming, a flame war, with claims of insanity, incompetence, lying (that's actually from me, I reacted a bit strongly to faked quoting + conclusions from that in a posting not appearing on Usenet but on the Python mail list), etc. etc. ad nauseam, sprinkled with misrepresentations etc. I don't know the point of that.
Cheers, - Alf -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
