Reference to list element question

[Skip Montanaro]

    David> The following code attempts to create a reference to a list
    David> element to reduce overhead for large files, however the result is
    David> a copy operation.

Yup.  Strings are immutable (can't be modified in place).  You would have to 
do something like:

    lines[i] = lines[i][:-1]

to delete the trailing newlines in lines[i].

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
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