Recent searches
Search options
This does bite people in Python, as it applies to lists and dicts in addition to Pandas or whatever that is.
list and dict have copy() methods, but they're shallow copies. If you have mutable objects in your list or dict, those can be changed by someone with a copy...
Use copy.deepcopy() to ensure you get a mutable object that no one else (barring evil intent...) has a handle to fiddle with its contents.
Oh, and sets too.
Example with shallow list copy and an embedded mutable object (another list):
>>> a = [1, 2, [3, 4]]
>>> b = a.copy()
>>> b
[1, 2, [3, 4]]
>>> b[0] = 5
>>> b
[5, 2, [3, 4]]
>>> a
[1, 2, [3, 4]]
>>> b[2][0] = 8
>>> a
[1, 2, [8, 4]]
>>> b
[5, 2, [8, 4]]