Beginner Question

[Igor Korot]

Hi, guys,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 9:42 PM, boB Stepp <robertvstepp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Marcin Rak <mrak at sightlineinnovation.com> wrote:
>> Hi to all
>>
>> I have a beginner question to which I have not found an answer I was able to understand.  Could someone explain why the following program:
>>
>> def f(a, L=[]):
>>     L.append(a)
>>     return L
>>
>> print(f(1))
>> print(f(2))
>> print(f(3))
>>
>> gives us the following result:
>>
>> [1]
>> [1,2]
>> [1,2,3]
>>
>> How can this be, if we never catch the returned L when we call it, and we never pass it on back to f???

I think the OP question here is:

Why it is printing the array?
There is no line like:

t = f(1)
print t

So, why the first print does print the list? The return value should
be thrown away...

Thank you.

>
> This comes up rather frequently.  In fact, if you just copy your
> function (Which is used in the official Python tutuorial.) and paste
> it into Google you will get some relevant hits.  One such is:
>
> https://pythonconquerstheuniverse.wordpress.com/category/python-gotchas/
>
> As the link will explain the behavior you observe is a consequence of
> two things:  When Python assigns the default argument for the empty
> list and that lists are *mutable*.
>
> Enjoy!
>
>
> --
> boB
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list