functions, list, default parameters

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Paul Rudin <paul.nospam at rudin.co.uk> writes:

> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:
>
>> Suppose I write an nasty C extension that mutates tuples. What then
>> would be illegal about...
>
> Depends on exactly what we mean by legal. If immutability is part of the
> language spec (rather than an artifact of a particular implementation)
> then a compiler could assume immutability.

And, indeed, it does exactly that.  Tuples of constant literals are
created at compilation time and reused across function invocations.

Mutating a tuple using a C extension is "illegal" in that it breaks the
rules of the system, by changing the semantics of valid code in
unexpected ways.  A more extreme example of this would be mutating the
constant 0 or the empty tuple.