On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Wayne Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm using Python 2.4 in Win XP. I was surprised to find the result below. > >>>> a =[4,2,5,8] >>>> b = a >>>> a.sort() >>>> a > [2, 4, 5, 8] >>>> b > [2, 4, 5, 8] > > b no longer has the same value as it began. Apparently to prevent sort from > making it the same I have to resort to copying b into a first? What is the > proper way to retain a variable with the original values of a?
Yes, you have to make a copy. This is as simple as b = list(a) In your original code, a and b refer to the same list. See http://personalpages.tds.net/~kent37/kk/00012.html http://effbot.org/zone/python-objects.htm Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
