Referring to a list

[Larry Bates]

Absolutely.  Everything in Python is a pointer.

x=final_list

is a pointer to final_list

x=final_list_other

changes what x points to.

Larry Bates
Syscon, Inc.

"Sean Berry" <sean_berry at cox.net> wrote in message
news:1a0Dc.13333$rh.4819 at okepread02...
> I have a function like this:
>
> final_list = []
>
> def doSomething():
>     for item in starting_list = []:
>         Do all sorts of stuff... about 150 lines of processing.
>         Lots of conditional statements for appending to the final_list.
>             So I have lots of final_list.append( results ) statements.
>
> I wanted to single out a few cases and have
> them append to a different list.
>
> The way I would "normally" do something like this would be to have
> all of the .append() statements in another function like this
>
> def addToList( listName, otherInfo )
>     do something with otherInfo.
>     then listName.append( results )
>
> But, in this case, by the time I get to this point there
> are too many variables to pass (something like 60).
>
> So, what I want to do is use some kind of name reference
> for the list I want to use.
>
> EXAMPLE:
> final_list = []
> secondary_list = []
>
> def DoSomething():
>     if (condition is met):
>         list_i_am_referring_to = final_list
>     else
>         list_i_am_referring_to = secondary_list
>
> then I can do everything using the list_i_am_referring_to.
>
> Is this possible???
>
> Sorry about my poor, and lengthy explanation.
> Thanks for any help.
>
>