How to best explain a "subtle" difference between Python and Perl ?

[David C. Ullrich]

In article 
<4290ea3f-43b9-455d-bd60-587369842c5b at s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
 Palindrom <demarcheb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone !
> 
> I'd like to apologize in advance for my bad english, it's not my
> mother tongue...
> 
> My girlfriend (who is a newbie in Python, but knows Perl quite well)
> asked me this morning why the following code snippets didn't give the
> same result :
> 
> ### Python ###
> 
> liste = [1,2,3]
> 
> def foo( my_list ):

Right now my_list is a local variable - since you
called foo(liste), the name my_list is bound to the
object liste

>     my_list = []

But this line doesn't modify liste, instead it
binds the name my_list to a different object.
 
If you want to modify the list that my_List points
to you could do it in either of two ways:

def foo1(my_liste):
  del my_liste[:]

def foo2(my_liste):
  my_liste[:] = []

> foo(liste)
> 
> print liste# she expected liste to be an empty list
> 
> ### Perl ###
> 
> @lst =(1,2,3);
> $liste =\@lst;
> foo($liste);
> print "@lst\n";
> 
> sub foo {
>  my($my_list)=@_;
>  @{$my_list}=()
> }
> 
> I have to admit that I don't know how to clearly explain to her the
> differences between these results.
> Could someone please help us understand these difference between
> Python and Perl ?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> P4|1ndr0m

-- 
David C. Ullrich