Tuples and immutability

[Mark Lawrence]

On 02/03/2014 13:38, Eric Jacoboni wrote:
> Le 02/03/2014 13:32, Ian Kelly a écrit :
>> On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 7:04 PM, Eric Jacoboni <eric.jacoboni at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In fact, i think i'm gonna forget += on lists :)
>>
>> Well, do what you want, but I think you're taking the wrong lesson
>> from this.  Don't forget about using += on lists.  Instead, forget
>> about using assignments, augmented or otherwise, on tuple elements.
>> Would you expect this to work?
>
> Well, the thing about += on lists that makes me forget it, like i said
> in my previous post, is that its behaviour is not consistent with +.

The behaviour is consistent except when you try to modify a tuple.

>
> Don't get me wrong: i don't expect that modifying a tuple element works.
> That's exactly my point: my initial question was, why it "half works :
> it should not work at all". I was thinking that += on lists worked like
> update() or extend() : modifying lists in place... It was my mistake

I'd like to see you get update to work on a list.  This shows how 
confused you are over this issue.

>
> So, yes, i still don't get the point using a += operation, which is not
> even consistent with the + operation (see my exemple on "spam" in my
> previous post). The + operator to return the modified list and the
> update() or extend() methods to do in place replacements are well enough
> for my present needs. Maybe, in the future, i will find a use case of +=
> for lists which is not covered by others methods, though... Who knows? I
> don't doubt that Python designers have made this choice and this
> behavior for a good reason: i've just not get it yet.
>

All of this comes about because of the known issue with tuples.  Take 
them out of the equation and the behaviour of =, +=, extend and append 
is consistent.

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask 
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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