Pointers in Python

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Anton Shishkov a écrit :
> Hi, I can't figure out how can I change the variable type in function.
> In C I could do that easily by changing pointer.

(snip)

Others already answered on this. Now, the real question is : why to you 
want to do such a thing ?

Of one the most common use case for this idiom in C is to workaround the 
lack of multiple return values, so your function returns an error code 
*and* "sets" a value thru the pointer. This idiom makes no sense in 
Python since we have exception handling. FWIW, other use case are 
usually solved by tuple unpacking, ie:


def fun(a, b):
    return a+b, a*b

sum_, prod = fun(5, 4.5)


HTH