Is this correct behavior for default parameters?

[Bruce Pearson]

The first call to test has the file_list empty but on the second call to test the file_list is no longer empty but contains the values appended in the first call.

Is this correct behavior? I'm using python 2.5

def test(param_1, file_list = []):
    
    if len(file_list) == 0:
        print "Empty list"
        file_list.append("list item 1")
        file_list.append("list item 2")        
    else:
        raise
    
    
if __name__ == "__main__":
    test(1)
    test(2)
    
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