Automatic debugging of copy by reference errors?

[Niels L Ellegaard]

Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
> In <1165666093.996141.244760 at n67g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>, Niels L
> Ellegaard wrote:
> > I have been using scipy for some time now, but in the beginning I made
> > a few mistakes with copying by reference.
> But "copying by reference" is the way Python works.  Python never copies
> objects unless you explicitly ask for it.  So what you want is a warning
> for *every* assignment.

Maybe I am on the wrong track here, but just to clarify myself:

I wanted  a each object to know whether or not it was being referred to
by a living object, and I wanted to warn the user whenever he tried to
change an object that was being refered to by a living object.  As far
as I can see the garbage collector module would allow to do some of
this, but one would still have to edit the assignment operators of each
of the standard data structures:

http://docs.python.org/lib/module-gc.html

Anyway you are probably right that the end result would be a somewhat
crippled version of python


                              Niels