function-arguments by reference

[Paul Rubin]

"EsC" <christian.eslbauer at liwest.at> writes:
> is it possible to pass function-arguments by reference?
> (for example in PHP you can use the "&" operator ... )

No.  If there's a specific situation you want to handle, say what it
is and someone will say how to deal with it in Python.  For example if
you want a function that returns multiple values, just return a list:

     def get_three_nums ():
        return (2, 3, 5)

     a, b, c = get_three_nums ()

sets a=2, b=3, and c=5.  You don't have to do anything kludgy like
"get_three_nums (&a, &b, &c)" or whatever.  If you want to swap two
variables, you can just use a list assignment like in perl:

   (x, y) = (y, x)