Re: The “does Python have variables?” debate

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 11:00 PM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
> On 05/06/2014 11:18 PM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>
>> Actually, while Python variables are not first-class objects, one could
>> see them as dictionary-key pairs. So you can even pass them by reference
>> by passing the dictionary and the key.
>
>
> Well, you could pass them that way, but not necessarily change them:
> [ chomp demo code using locals() ]

That's because, while you can *think of* Python name bindings as being
like dict key/value pairs, they aren't always that. Function locals,
class locals, and other such namespaces aren't necessarily implemented
with dicts. They're conceptually still a "dictionary" of sorts, but
you can't actually pass anyone a dict and key and expect it to work.

ChrisA