very strange problem in 2.4

[conor.robinson at gmail.com]

The Problem (very basic, but strange):

I have a list holding a population of objects, each object has 5 vars
and appropriate funtions to get or modify the vars.  When objects in
the list have identical vars (like all = 5 for var "a" and all = 10 for
var "b" across all vars and objects) and i change

self.mylist[i].change_var_a(5)

to a new value, in this case var "a" in object i to 5, now all vars of
type "a" in all objects in my list are changed to 5 instead of just var
"a" in object mylist[i], which is my goal.

if i print self.mylist[i].return_var_a() right after I change var "a"
in object i, I get the correct change, however when i print out the
whole list, the last change to var "a" in the last object modified
takes over for all objects in the list.

note: all the vars not being modified must be the same across all
objects in the list, the var being modified need not be the same as the
one before it in the list (but will be once just one of the identical
object are changed).  The value changed in the last object var modified
takes over for all object vars making them exactly identical.

****If, for example, half the list has objects with random vars init.
and the other half is identical, as above, and I perform the same
operation, as above, to one of the identical var objects

self.mylist[i].change_var_a(5) (to an object that has identicals in the
list)

all the identicals are changed in the same way as above, however the
objects that have different var values are unchanged.



What is python doing? Am I missing something? Any ideas at all would be
wonderful?