restriction on sum: intentional bug?

[Aahz]

In article <a33fb576-f453-4936-8551-9b999b5e2927 at p35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
Mark Dickinson  <dickinsm at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Oct 17, 9:49=A0pm, a... at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote:
>>
>> Ahhh, I vaguely remember there being some discussion of this when sum()
>> was introduced -- I think that using InPlaceAdd would have caused bad
>> behavior when the initial list was referred to by multiple names.
>
>Thanks for the pointer: I've now found the thread.  It looks like
>Alex Martelli made this exact change 6 years ago, and then had to
>revert it because it changed behaviour:
>
>http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-October/039511.html
>
>I've just checked in an extra test to test_builtin.py to make sure
>this bright idea isn't repeated. :)

Thanks!  I hope you added a comment to the code, too.  ;-)

And wow, sometimes my memory amazes me...
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

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