Terminology: "reference" versus "pointer"

[Random832]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2015, at 10:48, Akira Li wrote:
> start, stop, step attributes (corresponding Python ints) may not exist
> ("the objects we've talking about have never been created") until you
> request them explicitly.

That's not true in CPython. In fact, the range object in python contains
*four* reference boxes - one more for length.

> I've mentioned it in another message but to be clear, I consider "parcel
> tags" [1] and "box and arrows" [2] (boxes are always empty, they only
> point to objects) models to be the same and different from "labelled
> box" [3] model (boxes contain objects).

See, I consider the box and arrow to be the same as the labeled box
model - only the object the boxes contain is an arrow. Except for
special kinds of boxes implemented in some other language, such as the
elements of an array from the array module

The problem with "parcel tags" is that it represents namespaces - or one
particular namespace, I've never seen any version of it that even
clearly talks about locals, let alone different modules - differently
from other kinds of objects.