On Wednesday, September 6, 2017 at 9:55:10 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Rustom Mody wrote: > > Well ⅓ the point of pointers may be printing them out — which even in a > > language > > with 1st class pointers like C is rarely done/needed > > But still the useless part. You don't actually *achieve* anything by > printing out the pointer. > > > Another ⅓ is dereferencing, pointer-arithmetic etc... the various > > manifestations > > of 1st-class pointers > > This is the part that matters. > > > And the third ⅓ is to provide explanations to people asking authentic > > questions > > [like the OP of this thread] > > Only questions that actually relate to one of the previous parts.
[dangling pointer ?¿?¿ ] > > > Sure you can say with Steven that this can be 'explained' by saying an > > object > > can be in two places at one time. > > Others would then say 'Humpty-dumpty!' since you have removed the most basic > > intuition of objects and you are in effect saying that a python object > > means what you ordain it means without further ado/explanation > > > > Since you believe a reference-less dictionary can be a model for such > > explanations, > > why not provide that? > > A piece of paper works just fine. However, it's hard to use that > method of explanation in an email. I am ready to bet that if ASCII is insufficient then you are drawing pictures You can call them whatever you like - pointers, references - data structure diagrams - graphs vertices, edges - I think I'll call them Antoon-art in honor of Antoon Pardon who has the patience to draw them I believe it was Marko Rauhamaa who have another half dozen metaphors: - doggies and pussies er.. sorry leashes Whatever you use, you will have to reify in your explanation the idea of pointer/graph-edge/etc even and especially because, the language disallows such a reification -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
