On Sun, May 04, 2014 at 10:00:08AM +0100, Alan Gauld wrote: > For the specific case of sort you can always use > the sorted() function which does return a reference > (not a copy!) to the sorted item.
sorted() does make a copy of the list: py> a = [2, 5, 3, 4, 1] py> sorted(a), a ([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [2, 5, 3, 4, 1]) Perhaps you meant that it didn't copy the individual items inside the list? If so, you were correct: py> a = [ [5, 6], [1, 2], [7, 8], [3, 4] ] py> b = sorted(a) py> b[0].append(999) py> a [[5, 6], [1, 2, 999], [7, 8], [3, 4]] If you want to make copies of the items, you can import the copy module and use copy.deepcopy first. -- Steven _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
