[Python-Dev] Slice as a copy... by design? (original) (raw)

Facundo Batista facundobatista at gmail.com
Thu May 22 17:28:47 CEST 2008


Hi!

A thread in PyAr raised the question that, considering that strings are immutable, why a slice of a string is a copy and not a reference to a part of that string.

I couldn't answer why, so I'm asking here...Is it because the reference counting will be complicated? Is it because it'd be inefficient in other way? It's something else? Or is something that could be done... but is not done yet?

Thank you very much!

-- . Facundo

Blog: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/ PyAr: http://www.python.org/ar/



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