Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail
From: Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Subject: Re: What is a function parameter =[] for?
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 08:34:18 -0500
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On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 12:39:58 +0000, BartC <bc@freeuk.com> declaimed the
following:

>* The persistent nonsense that somehow [] is mutable (what happens is 
>that [] is assigned to a variable, and /that/ is mutable) (And I will 
>probably get some flak now because 'assign' and 'variable' are 
>meaningless in Python!)
>
	No... [] is a literal to the compiler which results in the compiler
generating a list OBJECT /at the point where the [] was encountered/. That
object is bound to some name. The name is not mutable, only the contents of
the generated object are mutable.

	You can substitute		list()	where ever you use	[] with no
effective change in the semantics. (I wouldn't be surprised if the parser
was doing that behind the scenes anyway).
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/