Hi Dave,
Am 14.02.14 19:08, schrieb dave em:
He is asking a question I am having trouble answering which is how a
variable containing a value differs from a variable containing a list
or more specifically a list reference.
as others have explained better and in more detail, there are mutable
and immutable values. The point is, that in
a=b
and
a[1] = x
the "=" behaves differently. In the first case, you discard the
reference, where a is pointing to, and bind to the same thing as b is
pointing to. In the second case, you modify the thing that a is pointing
to.
Recently, we tripped upon such a thing in a bad way; we were doing least
squares fitting with numpy, and the parameters passed through were
modified in the residuals function. That caused the LS algorithm to
fail. After we got suspicious about this, we tried to remedy by copying
the parameters
param_copy = param[:]
It still didn't work, because a list behaves differently than a numpy
array in this respect, to our big surprise:
# list slicing, as we know it
>>> a=[1,2,3,4]
>>> b=a[:] # list slicing creates a copy
>>> b[1]=123
>>> b
[1, 123, 3, 4]
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4]
# now numpy array slicing
>>> import numpy as np
>>> a=np.array([1, 2, 3, 4])
>>> a
array([1, 2, 3, 4])
>>> b=a[:] # numpy slicing creates a reference
>>> b[1]=123
>>> b
array([ 1, 123, 3, 4])
>>> a
array([ 1, 123, 3, 4])
Lesson learned: Don't modify parameters you got passed, if possible. It
is rarely what you want and can sometimes even happen, when you know you
don't want it.
Christian
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