Python deleted my vector values

Sometimes scripting languages can be a real annoyance. Why? Because when you get as much help as you do with for instance Python, you also lose a lot of control.

Being used to scripting languages like PHP, I made the funny mistake today of initializing a set of arrays like:

a = v = r = zeros((n,2),float)

This seemed like a really good idea, saving me from typing two extra lines(!). As the sucker I am for short code I was happy with my newfound shortcut. What I didn’t realize is that Python, in comparison to PHP, treats assignments like these as pointers instead of variables.

I believed this would create three arrays with a lot of zeros in two dimensions as I would expect from PHP, but the result was that I instead created one array with loads of zeros in two dimensions, with three pointers a, v and r all pointing to the same array.

When I then started setting the values for each of these arrays using Euler’s method, the result was that I got a lot of nonsense in what I thought was three separate arrays.

As a reminder to myself and everyone else out there; Python is not PHP. If you want to initialize three arrays like this in Python, you’ll have to stick to  the long version:

a = zeros((n,2),float)
r = zeros((n,2),float)
v = zeros((n,2),float)

Or, you could at least save yourself from having to edit each assignment if you ever need to change the code by writing:

a = zeros((n,2),float)
r = a.copy()
v = a.copy()