Terry J. Reedy added the comment:
The intro paragraph currently (3.2a) consists of
"This module provides generic (shallow and deep) copying operations."
This could be expanded to '''
Assignment statements create bindings between a target and an object. They never duplicate or copy an existing object. For collections that are mutable or contain mutable items, a copy is sometimes needed so one can change one copy without changing the other. Sequences can be shallow copied by slicing the entire sequence(s[:]). (See below for the meaning of 'shallow'.) Some objects can be shallow copied with their class constructors (tuple, list, set, dict). This module provides generic shallow *and* deep copying operations. The latter is not otherwise available in an single operation or call.'''
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nosy: +tjreedy
versions: +Python 3.1
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Python tracker
http://bugs.python.org/issue9021
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