passing by refference

[Joshua Marshall]

Doug Quale <quale1 at charter.net> wrote:
> Jeremy Hylton <jeremy at zope.com> writes:
...
>> If we care to debate terminology, then neither call-by-value nor
>> call-by-reference apply.  Python has call-by-object semantics.  As far
>> as I know, the first use of call-by-object was in a description of CLU.

> Python is call-by-value.  The values are objects, but the argument
> passing mechanism doesn't say anything about what values are in the
> language.

I think one of the problems with this discussion is that the
difference between modifying objects and rebinding variables has
been glossed over.  This may be the source of some unnecessary
disagreement.

(I'm not responding to this post specifically, but to the thread
in general.)