Performance when passing huge list as argument in recursive function?

Question

I am using Python and I have a recursive function that takes a huge list as one of the arguments:

# Current implementation
def MyFunction(arg1, arg2, my_huge         


        

Answer 1

No, arguments in Python are passed by reference.
More precisely - variables in Python is just a pointers that stores memory-addresses of actual data. So when Pythons variable-pointer passed to a function - it passed by its value - address pointing to actual data, it means that, variables passed to functions by value and value of variables are references to objects.

More on that topic:

• http://testingreflections.com/node/5126
• http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/handout.html#other-languages-have-variables