scared about refrences...

[Steve Holden]

SpreadTooThin wrote:
[...]
> I don't understand why python would insist that everything must be a
> refrence...

We can tell that :)

> It is of course helpful sometime but other times its not...  and now
> I'm sorta out
> of luck...

There are very good reasons for Python's namespace model. Sure it's 
different from some other languages, but it's actually been some 
people's preferred semantics for a very long time now (the 
recently-deceased Ralph Griswold, may he rest in peace, chose a very 
similar model for Icon.

> I don't know how to make this structure immutable...  Pickle it?  Seems
> very
> inefficient to me...
> Every time I pass a variable now I will worry that it will be changed
> by the function...
> I haven't worried about things like this since the very early days of
> BASIC....
> I don't know.. maybe I have more to learn.
> 
You do. Firstly, learn to leave your paranoia outside your programming 
life. If a function or method makes undocumented changes to its mutable 
parameters then it needs changing (or its documentation does).

Adequate testing should reveal such nonsenses before release.

regards
  Steve
-- 
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