[jerf]

"In the mutation example you suggest, if a reference to x isn't being passed into foo, how could foo modify x?"

Because it is passing a pointer by value under the hood.

This is the part that messes everyone up. Passing pointers by value is not what passing by reference used to mean.

And it matters, precisely because that is extremely realistic Python code that absolutely will mess you up if you don't understand exactly what is going on. You were passed a reference by value. If you go under the hood, you will find it is quite literally being copied and a ref count is being incremented. It's a new reference to the same stuff as the passed-in reference. But if you assign directly to the variable holding that reference, that variable will then be holding the new reference. This is base level, "I'd use it on an interview to see if you really know Python", level stuff.

Everything in a modern language involves passing things by value. Sometimes the language will gloss over it for you, but it's still a gloss. There were languages where things fundamentally, at the deepest level, were not passed by value. They're gone. Passing references by copy is not the same thing, and that Python code is precisely why it's not the same thing.

[dwattttt]

Sure, but in the traditional sense of pass-by-reference you could say it's just always pass-by-value, and that value is always a reference. It's just not a helpful thing to say. (In those traditional pass by reference languages, was it impossible to pass a scalar to a function?)

Passing a pointer-by-value similarly seems to be avoiding the point; if you tell me Python is always pass-by-value I'll expect an object I pass to a function to be a copy & not a reference, thus not be able to be mutated, and that's not the case.

[tsimionescu]

> Passing a pointer-by-value similarly seems to be avoiding the point; if you tell me Python is always pass-by-value I'll expect an object I pass to a function to be a copy & not a reference, thus not be able to be mutated, and that's not the case.

That would be a misunderstanding. It would only make sense if you think Python variables are Python objects. They are not: Python variables are pointers to objects. The fact that assignment to a variable never modifies the object pointed to by that variable is a consequence of that, and doesn't apply just to passing that variable to a function.