On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 11:20 PM, Peio Borthelle <peio.borthelle@gmail.com> wrote:
Here I alias an expression (that's also why the arg must be a string). But I don't know if this last example is something good because a would have to stay a number (or generate an exception by calling b). If a is destroyed, then calling b would generate an exception...I don't have enough experience in python programming to really know how work the garbage collector, so I don't know if a could be destroyed by it. This is the end of my suggestion (I hope it wasn't already proposed, else...).
The fact that identifiers are just references to objects rather than objects in their own right is central to the way the language works (in a very real sense, everything of significance in a Python program is either an object or a reference to an object). The distinction between mutable objects (e.g. lists) and immutable objects (e.g. tuples) is an immediate outcome of that - since the latter can't be modified directly, the only thing you can do is change which one you're referring to, which doesn't affect any other references to the old value. If you want mutable state, you have to store it on a mutable object. Regards, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia