passing by refference

[Doug Quale]

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:

> "Doug Quale" <quale1 at charter.net> wrote in message
> news:87n0hogdjd.fsf at charter.net...
> > You're right.  I meant the values are references to objects.
> 
> "reference to object" is an implementation concept and method, but not
> a 'value' in the abstract universe defined by Python, the information
> algorithm language.  Python the language is not (C)Python, the
> standard C-coded machine implementation.  Your statement is true, or
> can be reasonably seen to be so, in reference to the C implementation,
> but it is not necessarily even very meaningful from a more abstract
> viewpoint.  So if we are talking in different contexts, it is not
> surprising we evaluate the statement differently.

No.  Reference is not an implementation concept, it's a semantic
concept and completely abstract.  Saying y is a reference to a list
object in

y = [1, 2, 3]

is the same thing as saying that y denotes a list object.

If you think this is not so, explain what a Python value is.