Steven D'Aprano added the comment: Which note are you referring to? There are at least two mentioned in this thread, the FAQ and a footnote in the docs for stdtypes. If you're referring to the table of operations just below these: https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-types-str-unicode-l... https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#common-sequence-operations where the docs say: s * n, n * s n shallow copies of s concatenated I think that could be worded better. It is too easy to misread it as saying that the items of s are copied (as I just did now, despite knowing that they aren't). I would word it: repeat s n times and concatenate which matches the common name of * as the sequence repetition operator, and avoids using the word prone to misinterpretation, "copy". Given how error-prone sequence repetition is, I'd add an example directly in the table: for example, [x]*3 returns [x, x, x] (note that x is not copied). ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue23406> _______________________________________