strange behavor....

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:37:44 -0800, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:29:19 +0000, mdw at distorted.org.uk (Mark Wooding)
> declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general:
> 
> 
>> to a function argument /never/ affects the caller in Python.  It's
>> simply not possible to write a `swap' function in Python.  The latter
>> means that a value itself changes but the relevant variables continue
>> to store the same values.
>>
> 	I disagree (borrowing FORTRAN and Ada terms)...
> 
> 	You can not write a "swap" PROCEDURE in Python... PROCEDUREs do 
not
> return values except via side-effects on the arguments. FUNCTIONs
> however, do return values as the function result...

Ha, excellent point!

But in fairness, in context he was talking about a function that operates 
purely by side-effects -- what Pascal, Fortran or Ada would call a 
procedure.


-- 
Steven