Is there a standardized method to swap two variables in Python?

Question

In Python, I\'ve seen two variable values swapped using this syntax:

left, right = right, left

Is this considered the standard way to swap

Answer 1

To get around the problems explained by eyquem, you could use the copy module to return a tuple containing (reversed) copies of the values, via a function:

from copy import copy

def swapper(x, y):
  return (copy(y), copy(x))

Same function as a lambda:

swapper = lambda x, y: (copy(y), copy(x))

Then, assign those to the desired names, like this:

x, y = swapper(y, x)

NOTE: if you wanted to you could import/use deepcopy instead of copy.