You must be aware, however, that all of these techniques perform a shallow copy. That is, they create a new list containing references to the same objects as the source list, but they don't copy the referred-to objects. To demonstrate this, we'll use nested lists, with the inner lists serving as mutable objects. Here's a list containing two elements, each of which is itself a list:
>>> a = [ [1, 2], [3, 4] ]
We copy this list using a full slice:
>>> b = a[:]
And convince ourselves that we do in fact have distinct lists:
>>> a is bFalse
With equivalent values:
>>> a == bTrue
Notice, however, that the references within these distinct lists refer not only to equivalent objects:
>>> a[0][1, 2]>>> b[0][1, 2]
But, in fact, to the ...
