Mutable numbers

[Suresh Jeevanandam]

# I am new to python.

In python all numbers are immutable. This means there is one object ( a 
region in the memory ) created every time we do an numeric operation. I 
hope there should have been some good reasons why it was designed this way.

But why not have mutable numbers also in the language. A type which 
would behave as follows:

a = MutableInt(12)
b = a

Now both a and b should refer to the same memory location. Any change in 
the object should get reflected in all the references.

a.assign(13) # Same memory location should be updated with value 13, b 
is also 13 now.

Now we can further optimize:

a.incrementOne() # equivalent to a++ in C++
a.decrementOne()

and the augmented assignment operation also could be made optimized.

In any application most of the operation is numerical. So, i think, we 
should get a good speed advantage with the availability of mutable 
numbers. What do you think ?

regards,
Suresh