Problem with assigning variables of type List

[Hans Nowak]

Paul Foley wrote:

[me]
>>I guess one could argue that the "value" passed here is an object, in this case 
>>the list object, and the identity of that object cannot be changed by the 
>>function in such a way that the caller ends up with a different object. The 
>>id() of list a in the example is the same before and after the call.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
>>However, by that line of reasoning, C doesn't have call by reference either:
> 
> Correct; C doesn't have call by reference.  (C++ does, though)

> C doesn't do call by reference.  You can manually construct pointers
> to values, if you have something to point at (i.e., you can't make a
> pointer to a literal, or the result of an equation or function call,
> without involving a variable), but it's still call by value of the
> pointer (when you pass &a for some variable a, you're not passing "the
> address of the argument variable"; the argument is &a, not a.  You're
> passing the _value_ of &a -- which is the address of a, but that's
> utterly beside the point)

OK, so much like in that Lisp thread, we agree about what's going on under the 
covers, we just don't agree about the name.

I guess Tim Peters was right by calling it "call by object" to prevent, or at 
least delay, arguments like these. :-)

-- 
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