Slices time complexity
Ben Finney
ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Tue May 19 20:42:37 EDT 2015
Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> writes:
> If I draw two boxes on a blackboard with an arrow between them, I
> think it's perfectly reasonable to call that arrow a pointer.
Right. So the box with an arrow coming out of it is a good metaphor for
pointers — *in languages that have pointers*, which Python does not.
A box with an arrow coming out of it is a poor metaphor for Python's
references, since a Python reference doesn't contain anything accessible
to the programmer.
Instead, to avoid giving the false impression that Python's references
are boxes containing things, write a bare name (or other reference) on
the blackboard, referring to the box that *does* contain a value
accessible to the programmer.
--
\ “The Vatican is not a state.… a state must have people. There |
`\ are no Vaticanians.… No-one gets born in the Vatican except by |
_o__) an unfortunate accident.” —Geoffrey Robertson, 2010-09-18 |
Ben Finney
More information about the Python-list
mailing list