On Monday, August 6, 2012 3:50:13 PM UTC-4, Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> I ran the following code:
>
>
>
> def xx(nlist):
>
> print("begin: ",nlist)
>
> nlist+=[999]
>
> print("middle:",nlist)
>
> nlist=nlist[:-1]
>
> print("final: ",nlist)
>
>
>
> u=[1,2,3,4]
>
> print(u)
>
> xx(u)
>
> print(u)
>
>
>
> and obtained the following result:
>
>
>
> [1, 2, 3, 4]
>
> begin: [1, 2, 3, 4]
>
> middle: [1, 2, 3, 4, 999]
>
> final: [1, 2, 3, 4]
>
> [1, 2, 3, 4, 999]
>
>
>
> As beginner I couldn't understand why the last line wasn't [1, 2, 3, 4].
>
> Could someone kindly help?
>
>
>
> M. K. Shen
The list nlist inside of function xx is not the same as the variable u outside
of the function: nlist and u refer to two separate list objects. When you
modify nlist, you are not modifying u. If you wanted the last line to be [1,
2, 3, 4], you could use the code below:
#BEGIN CODE
def xx(nlist):
print("begin: ",nlist)
nlist+=[999]
print("middle:",nlist)
nlist=nlist[:-1]
print("final: ",nlist)
return nlist
u=[1,2,3,4]
print(u)
u = xx(u)
print(u)
#END CODE
Notice that I changed two things. First, the function xx(nlist) returns nlist.
Secondly, u is reassigned to the result of xx(nlist).
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