Variables vs. names

[Aahz]

In article <j4fzvi950k.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de>,
Martin v. =?iso-8859-1?q?L=F6wis?= <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:
>aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:
>>
>> Python names don't have values.  Names are always references to objects.
>> I don't know Java well enough to have any clue how it handles references,
>> but I know Java doesn't have pointers.  
>
>Python and Java are really the same in this respect. In Java,
>variables are (normally) references to objects. The only exception are
>primitive types, which are stored and passed by value. Since they are
>immutable, this difference is negligible. Like Java, Python does not
>have pointers, either.

Interesting.  Does Java permit subclassing from primitive types?  What's
the Java equivalent of this code:

import m

def f(a):
    return a.x

def g(foo, bar):
    return foo(bar)

print g(f, m)
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

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