I am having a problem which is hard to explain because there's a lot of code involve. So it boils down to the following problem. I am trying to access the list xxx outside the function foo but I am getting unexpected results. Can someone please explain why? Here's my function which I have created to show the problem: def foo(xxx = []): if len(xxx) == 5: return xxx xxx += [1] foo() return xxx If I run print foo() I get [1, 1, 1, 1, 1] which is what I expect. But I want the list xxx to be accessible outside foo. So, I am doing xxx = [] print foo(xxx) print xxx Now I expect to get the list xxx to be [1, 1, 1, 1, 1] but what I am getting xxx to be, is [1] which is not what I expect. Can someone explain why? And is it possible to access the correct xxx outside foo without accessing it through the output of the function foo? The reason I want to do this is because in my actual code I am returning something other than in my function foo and making changes to xxx which I want to see after the foo has executed. I can make the function also return xxx every time but this will make my code unnecessarily bulky. But I am not sure if I am compromising the code quality. I don't know. Please suggest which ever way is the best. Thanks Continue reading...
