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| -rw-r--r-- | bot/resources/tags/mutability.md | 34 |
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diff --git a/bot/resources/tags/mutability.md b/bot/resources/tags/mutability.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..08e28b370 --- /dev/null +++ b/bot/resources/tags/mutability.md @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +# Mutable vs immutable objects + +Imagine that you want to make all letters in a string upper case. +Conveniently, strings have an `.upper()` method. + +You might think that this would work: +```python +string = "abcd" +string.upper() +print(string) # abcd +``` + +`string` didn't change. Why is that so? + +That's because strings in Python are _immutable_. You can't change them, you can only pass +around existing strings or create new ones. + +```python +string = "abcd" +string = string.upper() +``` +`string.upper()` creates a new string which is like the old one, but with all +the letters turned to upper case. + +`int`, `float`, `complex`, `tuple`, `frozenset` are other examples of immutable data types in Python. + +Mutable data types like `list`, on the other hand, can be changed in-place: +```python +my_list = [1, 2, 3] +my_list.append(4) +print(my_list) # [1, 2, 3, 4] +``` + +`dict` and `set` are other examples of mutable data types in Python. |