side effects on *some* default parameters

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Wed Feb 12 20:55:31 EST 2003


Joe Grossberg wrote:

> Why does this happen? Specifically: when I call this function, how
> come
> aStr is reset to 'foo', but aList never reverts to an empty list?

Because in Python, default argument values are only created once.  The
FAQ addresses this, and it gets asked about once a week in the group.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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