What is a function parameter =[] for?

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 1:24 AM, Antoon Pardon
<antoon.pardon at rece.vub.ac.be> wrote:
>> Start thinking of it as a constructor call rather than a literal, and
>> you'll get past most of the confusion.
>
> That doesn't change the fact it does look like a literal and not like
> a constructor.

Then explain how this is a literal:

squares = [x*x for x in range(int(input("How far? ")))]

Or even a simple example like this:

coords = (randrange(10), randrange(10))

Neither of them is a literal, even though one of them isn't even
constructing a list. Tuples may be constant, but they still don't have
a literal form. (Constant folding can make them function the same way
literals do, though. If a tuple is constructed of nothing but
immutable constants - including an empty tuple - then CPython will
generally create a constant for the whole tuple and use that, rather
than manually constructing one every time. But the same is true of
other expressions involving nothing but constants.)

So if it (in your opinion) looks like a literal but isn't one, whose
fault is it? Yours or the language's? Not a rhetorical question.

ChrisA