Extended Assignment Operators – we use them all the time as shorthands for assigning values.
Lets see how this works when using multiple identifiers (variables) in terms of simple data like a number.
>>> a = 5 >>> b = a >>> b += 3 >>> print(a) 5 >>> print(b) # only the value of b is changed even though we have assigned a to b 8 >>> b = b+4 # the long form assignment also doesn't affect the original a >>> print(b) 12 >>> print(a) 5
Pitfall
Let us apply a similar set of operations on list
>>> a = [1,2,3] >>> b = a >>> b += [4,5] >>> print(a) # surprise! - changing the value of b also affect the value of a [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] >>> print(b) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] >>> b = b+[6,7] >>> print(b) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] >>> print(a) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] # surprise again !! - but assigning a new value to b doesn't
Takeaway
Now the question is, why does the value of a change when adding elements to b?
And furthermore why doesn’t it change when we do it using the long form?
The answer is: Extended assignment operators act differently on mutable and immutable values.
So when we say b += [4,5] we are basically saying add 4 and 5 to the list b, but when we say
b = b + [6,7], we are saying “take the list b, add 6, 7 to it and create a new list from it, then assign it to the identifier b”.
This subtle difference will come to bite us when we least expect it. So be aware and take precautions 🙂
Arunmozhi 