On Sun, 23 Dec 2012, Jochen Ziegenbalg wrote:
> But: How can the non-specialized user of Maxima know about this?
Python, a very popular language, works in the same way:
n1=3
n2=n1
The integer 3 is copied to n2. But
l1=[1,2,3]
l2=l1
The *reference* to the list is copied to l2.
After that, any change in l1 is seen also in l2, and vice versa. The usual
python idiom to get a copy of the list is
l2=l1[:]
So, maxima is not at all strange - it's like python.
Andrey