[Edu-sig] Sticky-note Analogy

[Mark Tolonen]

"kirby urner" <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:f604188c0805090730v2163d12dw9970fcf4b96220ac at mail.gmail.com...
> I've suggesting seeing 8 as a name only briefly, temporary gestalt
> switch, then go back to seeing it as a literal, kind of like a name
> in that you can do dot notation on it, i.e. there's an underlying
> object that's responsive to these triggers (like 8 .__add__(5)
> instead of just 8 + 5).  But is the underlying object "anonymous"?
>
> It has a memory location:
>
>>>> id(8)
> 12015636
>
>>>> id('8')
> 13259744
>
> And I'm able to refer to it.  I didn't make up a name for it, like
> eight, because I didn't need to, it's already permanently
> accessible through 8.
>

Numbers are just language syntax to create objects.  If they aren't assigned 
a name, they disappear.

>>> x=1000
>>> y=x
>>> z=x
>>> y is z
True

x is the name of an object.  y and z also are names for that object.
1000 is not a name:

>>> x=1000
>>> y=1000
>>> z=1000
>>> x is y
False
>>> x is z
False
>>> y is z
False

a new object is created each time.

-Mark

P.S. Note, at least in CPython, that same example won't work for small 
numbers because of an implementation detail that caches the common 'small 
number' objects for performance reasons.

>>> x=1
>>> y=1
>>> z=1
>>> x is y
True
>>> y is z
True