python assignment

[Raymond Arthur St. Marie II of III]

Ray was tryin to follow the thread ...

Dan was talking to Tim about something.
(see below signature if your not following 
thread and want to know what it's about.)

... and Ray had a question.

>[Dan to Tim paraphrased]
>
>My solution, which I'm worried about, was this:
>
>  for x in range(n):
>    temp = [x+y for y in range(3)]   #or whatever
>    v[x] = temp + []                 #'assignment by copy'???
>

Ray's question = That last line "v[x] = temp + []",
that's equivelent to "v.append(temp)", is it not?


TIA
Ray St.Marie
Rastm2 at aol.com

Thread I got this from
>"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote in message
>news:<mailman.1058992140.17079.python-list at python.org>...
>> [Tim]
>...
>> Bjorn added more appropriate words -- it would be bad design for the
>> __iadd__ method of a mutable type to return a pre-existing object other
>than
>> self.
>> 
>> >>> a = [1, 2]
>> >>> b = [1]
>> >>> b += [2]
>> 
>> While "a == b" must be true at this point, it would be a nightmare if "a is
>> b" could be true at this point.  For immutable types it doesn't matter:
>> 
>> >>> a = (1, 2)
>> >>> b = (1,)
>> >>> b += (2,)
>> 
>> It so happens that "a is b" is not true at this point under any Python
>> released so far, but it could be true someday without causing harm.
>> 
>> Sorry for the confusion!
>
>Ok, that makes sense to me.  I still think it would be a good idea to
>put a section in the Tutorial -- perhaps under "for computer
>scientists and those who want to learn more" -- describing how Python
>binds names to objects.
>
>In particular, the fact that a list is a list of pointers, not the
>objects themselves, seems like an important point to make, even for
>relative newcomers.
>
>Here's the thing that tripped me up, and the solution I came up with,
>which I am now unsure of:
>
>#original code -- v[] is a list
>
>  for x in range(n):
>    temp = [x+y for y in range(3)]   #or whatever
>    v[x] = temp
>
>so I was quite surprised to find all members of v[] were in  fact
>pointers to one object, temp[].
>
>My solution, which I'm worried about, was this:
>
>  for x in range(n):
>    temp = [x+y for y in range(3)]   #or whatever
>    v[x] = temp + []                 #'assignment by copy'???
>
>So I'm still unclear as to whether an expression like temp+[] is
>defined as returning a new list or not.  Seems like it might be
>undefined, since either way is arguably 'correct'.
>