A small inconsistency in syntax?

[Chris Liechti]

wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley) wrote in
news:slrn9tjkh7.kq0.wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net: 

> On 26 Oct 2001 23:05:23 +0200, Chris Liechti wrote:
>>this; [1,2][1]=23
>>should raise an "SyntaxError: can't assign to literal", but does not.
> 
> Why?  There are many types of literals; some of them are mutable and
> some are immutable.  You can't assign to an immutable literal (try your
> example with a tuple), but there's no reason to stop you from assigning
> to (or modifying) a mutable literal.
> 
> This statement, in this case, has the effect of converting the [1,2]
> list to [1,23], and then discarding it.

ok writing it explicit makes it logic...
>>> l=[3,2]
>>> l
[3, 2]
>>> l[1]=23
>>> l
[3, 23]

i thought that when you write [3,2][1] = 23 that the LHS is evaluated to 2 
and 2=23 does obviously raise an exception. when you look at the explicit 
example, i see how it works, but i would think that, when i look at the 
compact example, the complete left hand side would be evaluated before 
assignment (like it is on the right side). 



-- 
Chris <cliechti at gmx.net>