On Dec 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, Simon King wrote:
> Dear Lars, dear Robert,
>
>> The explanation is hidden in a footnote in the tutorial. Please see
>> "Defining Functions" in "More Control Flow Tools" in the Python
>> Tutorial:http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#defining-
>> functions
>
> That part of the documentation seems misleading to me and ought to be
> changed, IMHO.
I agree, a bug report should be filed with Python.
> I mean, it is argued that any call-by-reference is in fact a call-by-
> value because an object reference *is* a value, after all...
> ("arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always
> an object reference, not the value of the object).")
>
> Is there a better way to hide a pitfall :-?
I think the point they're trying to make is that if I do
foo(a)
then the object a may be mutated, but no matter what foo does it will
never be able to point the caller's value of a to a different object.
- Robert
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