Problem with assigning variables of type List

[Paul Foley]

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 09:27:02 +0200, Max M wrote:

> Paul Foley wrote:
>> On 19 Aug 2002 14:48:34 -0700, Abhishek Roy wrote:

>>> Thank you very much. I had not realized that lists are passed by
>>> reference by default,

>> Good.  Because they're not.

> Please elaborate with an example. A statement like that dosn't add much 
> to the discussion.

> But I don't think we have the same definition of "by reference" and "by 
> value"!

> l1 = l2 = [1,2]
> l1.append(3)
> print l2
>>>> [1, 2, 3]

> That is "by reference" in my book.

Try this:

  >>> def reftest(x):
  ...    x = [42]
  ...
  >>> y = [1,2,3]
  >>> reftest(y)
  >>> y
  [1, 2, 3]

if it were passed by reference, you'd see [42] on the last line.

-- 
Just because we Lisp programmers are better than everyone else is no
excuse for us to be arrogant.                                -- Erann Gat

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