Richard Damon <rich...@damon-family.org>: >> On Jul 22, 2018, at 3:50 PM, Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: >> I wish people stopped talking about "name binding" and "rebinding," >> which are simply posh synonyms for variable assignment. Properly, the >> term "binding" comes from lambda calculus, whose semantics is defined >> using "bound" and "free" variables. Lambda calculus doesn't have >> assignment. > > Marko, I think the term binding makes sense in python due to how names > work. In python and the following code: > > X = getit() > Y = X > X.changeit() > > In python, presuming getit() returns some form of object (so it has a > changeit() member) then X and Y are bound to the same object, and > changeit() will thus also affect the object that we see at Y.
Would you call it binding in this case: X[0]["z"] = getit() X[3]["q"] = X[0]["z"] X[0]["z"].changeit() I think what you are talking about is more usually called "referencing." > With a language with more ‘classical’ variable, the assignment of Y = > X would normal make a copy of that object, so the value Y does not get > changed by X.changeit(). I Java terms, all Python values are boxed. That's a very usual pattern in virtually all programming languages (apart from FORTRAN). Marko -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
