A question on modification of a list via a function invocation

[Antoon Pardon]

On 04-09-17 16:30, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2017 12:09 am, Antoon Pardon wrote:
> 
>> Op 04-09-17 om 15:26 schreef Steve D'Aprano:
>>> On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 08:52 pm, Antoon Pardon wrote:
>>>
>>>> Op 04-09-17 om 12:22 schreef Stefan Ram:
>>>>> Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>>> Stefan Ram wrote:
>>>>>>>> JavaScript and Python do not have references as values
>>>>>>> Yes, they do. The difference is that they don't have any
>>>>> ...
>>>>>> Its because reference (or pointer or ?) is central to python's semantics
>>>>>   If they are so central, then it should be easy to show
>>>>>   quotes from The Python Language Reference to support that
>>>>>   claim.
>>>> The section about assignment talks about reference counts.
>>> Does that mean that IronPython and Jython aren't implementations of Python?
>>> They have no reference counts.
>>
>> I am not a lawyer
> 
> But you are a Python programmer.
> 
> You should be aware that reference counts are a property of the CPython
> implementation, not a language feature. Jython and IronPython, at the very
> least, are valid, conforming implementations of Python the language which have
> no reference counts. Therefore reference counts cannot be central to Python's
> semantics, since there are Python interpreters that don't use them.

It is not my responsibility that reference counts are mentioned in the
language referece. In how far mentioning reference counts in the language
reference makes IronPython or Jython not python is IMO food for lawyers.

I also didn't claim reference counts are essential to python's semantics.

-- 
Antoon Pardon