[Tutor] Sort Output

[greg whittier]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Wayne Watson
<sierra_mtnview at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

>  I'm using Python 2.4 in Win XP. I was surprised to find the result below.
>
> >>> a =[4,2,5,8]
> >>> b = a
> >>> a.sort()
> >>> a
> [2, 4, 5, 8]
> >>> b
> [2, 4, 5, 8]
>
> b no longer has the same value as it began. Apparently to prevent sort from
> making it the same I have to resort to copying b into a first? What is the
> proper way to retain a variable with the original values of a?
>

You could use b = a[:].
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