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

Below code demonstrates the difference between assignment, shallow copy using the copy method, shallow copy using the (slice) [:] and the deepcopy. Below example uses nested lists there by making the differences more evident.

from copy import deepcopy

########"List assignment (does not create a copy) ############
l1 = [1,2,3, [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
l1_assigned = l1

print(l1)
print(l1_assigned)

print(id(l1), id(l1_assigned))
print(id(l1[3]), id(l1_assigned[3]))
print(id(l1[3][0]), id(l1_assigned[3][0]))

l1[3][0] = 100
l1.pop(4)
l1.remove(1)


print(l1)
print(l1_assigned)
print("###################################")

########"List copy using copy method (shallow copy)############

l2 = [1,2,3, [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
l2_copy = l2.copy()

print(l2)
print(l2_copy)

print(id(l2), id(l2_copy))
print(id(l2[3]), id(l2_copy[3]))
print(id(l2[3][0]), id(l2_copy[3][0]))
l2[3][0] = 100
l2.pop(4)
l2.remove(1)


print(l2)
print(l2_copy)

print("###################################")

########"List copy using slice (shallow copy)############

l3 = [1,2,3, [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
l3_slice = l3[:]

print(l3)
print(l3_slice)

print(id(l3), id(l3_slice))
print(id(l3[3]), id(l3_slice[3]))
print(id(l3[3][0]), id(l3_slice[3][0]))

l3[3][0] = 100
l3.pop(4)
l3.remove(1)


print(l3)
print(l3_slice)

print("###################################")

########"List copy using deepcopy ############

l4 = [1,2,3, [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
l4_deep = deepcopy(l4)

print(l4)
print(l4_deep)

print(id(l4), id(l4_deep))
print(id(l4[3]), id(l4_deep[3]))
print(id(l4[3][0]), id(l4_deep[3][0]))

l4[3][0] = 100
l4.pop(4)
l4.remove(1)

print(l4)
print(l4_deep)
print("##########################")
print(l4[2], id(l4[2]))
print(l4_deep[3], id(l4_deep[3]))

print(l4[2][0], id(l4[2][0]))
print(l4_deep[3][0], id(l4_deep[3][0]))