What is the difference between shallow copy, deepcopy and normal assignment operation?

Question

import copy

a = \"deepak\"
b = 1, 2, 3, 4
c = [1, 2, 3, 4]
d = {1: 10, 2: 20, 3: 30}

a1 = copy.copy(a)
b1 = copy.copy(b)
c1 = copy.copy(c)
d1 = copy.copy(d)


prin         


        

Answer 1

For immutable objects, there is no need for copying because the data will never change, so Python uses the same data; ids are always the same. For mutable objects, since they can potentially change, [shallow] copy creates a new object.

Deep copy is related to nested structures. If you have list of lists, then deepcopy copies the nested lists also, so it is a recursive copy. With just copy, you have a new outer list, but inner lists are references.

Assignment does not copy. It simply sets the reference to the old data. So you need copy to create a new list with the same contents.