What other languages use the same data model as Python?

Gregory Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Tue May 10 18:47:46 EDT 2011


Chris Angelico wrote:

> There has to be a way to get from some mythical "home" location (which
> we know in Python as locals()+globals()+current expression - the
> "current namespace") to your object. That might involve several names,
> or none at all, but if there's no such path, the object is
> unreferenced and must be disposed of.

Yes, that's what I mean by "bound to some anonymous thing".
Somewhere in the implementation there must be one or more
"root" references, but they don't necessarily have any names
that you can refer to from Python.

When I say "not bound to any name", I just mean that it's
okay to leave some bindings out of your diagram if they're
not pertinent to what you're trying to illustrate. For
example, you can draw a box representing a string object
and trust that something will keep it alive long enough
for you to draw an arrow to it from the name you're
assigning it to.

-- 
Greg



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