[Forward][python]How do I pass a variable by reference?
September 20th, 2011 by bettermanlu
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/986006/python-how-do-i-pass-a-variable-by-reference
Question
The Python documentation seems unclear about whether parameters are passed by reference or value, and the following code produces the unchanged value ‘Original’
class PassByReference:
def __init__(self):
self.variable = 'Original'
self.Change(self.variable)
print self.variable
def Change(self, var):
var = 'Changed'
Is there something I can do to pass the variable by actual reference?
Answer
Parameters are passed by value. The reason people are confused by the behaviour is twofold:
- the parameter passed in is actually a reference to a variable (but the reference is passed by value)
- some data types are mutable, but others aren’t
So, if you pass a mutable object into a method, the method gets a reference to that same object and you can mutate it to your heart’s delight, but if you rebind the reference in the method, the outer scope will know nothing about it, and after you’re done, the outer reference will still point at the original object. If out pass an immutable object to a method, you still can’t rebind the outer reference, and you can’t even mutate the object.
Okay, this is a little confusing. Let’s have some examples.
List – a mutable type
Let’s try to modify the list that was passed to a method:
def try_to_change_list_contents(the_list):
print 'got', the_list
the_list.append('four')
print 'changed to', the_list
outer_list = ['one', 'two', 'three']
print 'before, outer_list =', outer_list
try_to_change_list_contents(outer_list)
print 'after, outer_list =', outer_list
Output:
before, outer_list = ['one', 'two', 'three']
got ['one', 'two', 'three']
changed to ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']
after, outer_list = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']
Since the parameter passed in is a reference to outer_list, not a copy of it, we can use the mutating list methods to change it and have the changes reflected in the outer scope.
Now let’s see what happens when we try to change the reference that was passed in as a parameter:
def try_to_change_list_reference(the_list):
print 'got', the_list
the_list = ['and', 'we', 'can', 'not', 'lie']
print 'set to', the_list
outer_list = ['we', 'like', 'proper', 'English']
print 'before, outer_list =', outer_list
try_to_change_list_reference(outer_list)
print 'after, outer_list =', outer_list
Output:
before, outer_list = ['we', 'like', 'proper', 'English']
got ['we', 'like', 'proper', 'English']
set to ['and', 'we', 'can', 'not', 'lie']
after, outer_list = ['we', 'like', 'proper', 'English']
Since the the_list parameter was passed by value, assigning a new list to it had no effect that the code outside the method could see. The the_list was a copy of the outer_list reference, and we had the_list point to a new list, but there was no way to change where outer_list pointed.
String – an immutable type
It’s immutable, so there’s nothing we can do to change the contents of the string
Now, let’s try to change the reference
def try_to_change_string_reference(the_string):
print 'got', the_string
the_string = 'In a kingdom by the sea'
print 'set to', the_string
outer_string = 'It was many and many a year ago'
print 'before, outer_string =', outer_string
try_to_change_string_reference(outer_string)
print 'after, outer_string =', outer_string
Output:
before, outer_string = It was many and many a year ago
got It was many and many a year ago
set to In a kingdom by the sea
after, outer_string = It was many and many a year ago
Again, since the the_string parameter was passed by value, assigning a new string to it had no effect that the code outside the method could see. The the_string was a copy of theouter_string reference, and we had the_string point to a new list, but there was no way to change where outer_string pointed.
I hope this clears things up a little.
EDIT: It’s been noted that this doesn’t answer the question that @David originally asked, “Is there something I can do to pass the variable by actual reference?”. Let’s work on that.
How do we get around this?
As @Andrea‘s answer shows, you could return the new value. This doesn’t change the way things are passed in, but does let you get the information you want back out:
def return_a_whole_new_string(the_string):
new_string = something_to_do_with_the_old_string(the_string)
return new_string
# then you could call it like
my_string = return_a_whole_new_string(my_string)
If you really wanted to avoid using a return value, you could create a class to hold your value and pass it into the function or use an existing class, like a list:
def use_a_wrapper_to_simulate_pass_by_reference(stuff_to_change):
new_string = something_to_do_with_the_old_string(stuff_to_change[0])
stuff_to_change[0] = new_string
# then you could call it like
wrapper = [my_string]
use_a_wrapper_to_simulate_pass_by_reference(wrapper)
do_something_with(wrapper[0])
Although this seems a little cumbersome.
Reference
Immutable object
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutable_object
In object-oriented and functional programming, an immutable object is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created.[1] This is in contrast to a mutable object, which can be modified after it is created. In some cases, an object is considered immutable even if some internally used attributes change but the object’s state appears to be unchanging from an external point of view. For example, an object that uses memoization to cache the results of expensive computations could still be considered an immutable object.
Immutable objects are often useful because they are inherently thread safe.[1] Other benefits are that they are simpler to understand and reason about and offer higher security than mutable objects.[1]
However, making an object immutable is usually inappropriate if the object contains a large amount of changeable data. Because of this, many languages allow for both immutable and mutable objects.
Python
In Python some built-in types (numbers, strings, tuples, frozensets) are immutable, but custom classes are generally mutable. To simulate immutability in a class, one should override attribute setting and deletion to raise exceptions:
class Immutable(object):
"""An immutable class with a single attribute 'value'."""
def __setattr__(self, *args):
raise TypeError("can't modify immutable instance")
__delattr__ = __setattr__
def __init__(self, value):
# we can no longer use self.value = value to store the instance data
# so we must explicitly call the superclass
super(Immutable, self).__setattr__('value', value)
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