assignment statements: lists vs. strings

[Karl Pflästerer]

On  2 Feb 2004, Klaus Neuner <- klaus_neuner82 at yahoo.de wrote:

> I would like to understand the reason for the following difference
> between dealing with lists and dealing with strings: What is this
> difference good for? How it is accounted for in Python slang?

Strings are immutable and lists are mutable objects.

>>>> string1 = "bla"
>>>> string2 = string1
>>>> string1 = string1 + "bla"

Here you create a new string string1 which is fresh allocated.
>>>> string1
> 'blabla'
>>>> string2
> 'bla'

If you did `id(string1)' and `id(string2)' before and after the
assignment you would have that after the assignment you had two
different objects.

>>>> list1 = [1,2]
>>>> list2 = list1
>>>> list1.append(1)

Here you modify an existing list in place.  But that's not the same as
you did with your string exapmle.  With a string you couldn't do that
since a string is immutable.

If you had written list1 = list1 + [1] you would have had a new list
object.

>>> L1 = [1,2]
>>> L2 = L1
>>> id(L1)
10489068
>>> id(L2)
10489068
>>> L1 = L1 + [1]
>>> id(L1)
10488140
>>> id(L2)
10489068
>>> L2
[1, 2]
>>> L1
[1, 2, 1]
>>> 


   KP

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