Tuple slicing not returning a new object as opposed to list slicing

Question

In Python (2 and 3). Whenever we use list slicing it returns a new object, e.g.:

l1 = [1,2,3,4]
print(id(l1))
l2 = l1[:]
print(id(l2))

Output

Answer 1

It's an implementation detail. Because lists are mutable, l1[:] must create a copy, because you wouldn't expect changes to l2 to affect l1.

Since a tuple is immutable, though, there's nothing you can do to t2 that would affect t1 in any visible way, so the compiler is free (but not required) to use the same object for t1 and t1[:].