why cannot assign to function call

[Mark Wooding]

rurpy at yahoo.com <rurpy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Agreed.  I think the docs, especially those that develop
> the conceptual model of how Python work at runtime, could
> use some major attention.

If we can achieve consensus in this (still remarkably civil) discussion,
we might be able to amend the docs.

> I would be willing to bet that most of the confused posters do not
> distinguish between assignment operation (AO) and data model (DM).
> Their conceptual box is labeled "assignment behavior" and includes
> both AO and DM.  They expect that AO+DM in Python will produce the
> same results in Python as they are used to in the other languages
> they've used.  That the discrepancy comes from the DM part rather than
> the AO part is pretty irrelevant to them given that world view.

I think that we're in agreement, up to this point at least.  That's
good.

My claim is that, until they learn to distinguish these two aspects of
Python's semantics, they will remain confused.

-- [mdw]