On Dec 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, Simon King wrote: > Dear Lars, dear Robert, > >> The explanation is hidden in a footnote in the tutorial. Please see >> "Defining Functions" in "More Control Flow Tools" in the Python >> Tutorial:http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#defining- >> functions > > That part of the documentation seems misleading to me and ought to be > changed, IMHO.
I agree, a bug report should be filed with Python. > I mean, it is argued that any call-by-reference is in fact a call-by- > value because an object reference *is* a value, after all... > ("arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always > an object reference, not the value of the object).") > > Is there a better way to hide a pitfall :-? I think the point they're trying to make is that if I do foo(a) then the object a may be mutated, but no matter what foo does it will never be able to point the caller's value of a to a different object. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---