Why was p[:] designed to work differently in these two situations?

Question

p = [1,2,3]
print(p) # [1, 2, 3]

q=p[:]  # supposed to do a shallow copy
q[0]=11
print(q) #[11, 2, 3] 
print(p) #[1, 2, 3] 
# above confirms that q is not p, and is a d         


        

Answer 1

del on iterator is just a call to __delitem__ with index as argument. Just like parenthesis call [n] is a call to __getitem__ method on iterator instance with index n.

So when you call p[:] you are creating a sequence of items, and when you call del p[:] you map that del/__delitem__ to every item in that sequence.