assign dict by value to list

[Steve Holden]

Phill Atwood wrote:
> Newbie question:
> 
> I have a dictionary called "rec".  And a list called "db". db is my 
> database. rec are to be records in the database. In a loop I'm trying to 
> create a record and add it to my database.  The key stmt is
> 
> db.append( rec )
> 
> This works initially but it seems that instead of copying the values in 
> rec and adding it to db, only a reference of rec is added to db.  Thus
> when I reassign rec with new data and then do another append I end up
> with two records in my database but now the both contain the same data, 
> namely the latest version or rec.
> 
> So how do I add a dictionary into a list by value rather than by reference?
> 
> The complete code is here:
> 
[code snipped]

I see you do a rec.clear() to clear out the contents of one record 
before creating a new one. Python only *ever* uses references, so why 
not just use

     rec = {}

instead of rec.clear()?

regards
  Steve
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