Question

I’ve asked almost this just before now, but the fix doesn’t work for x = [[]], which I’m guessing is because it is a nested list, which is what I will be working with.

def myfunc(w):
 y = w[:]
 y[0].append('What do I need to do to get this to work here?')
 y[0].append('When I search for the manual, I get pointed to python.org, but I can\'t find the answer there.')
 return y

x = [[]]
z = myfunc(x)
print(x)

Answer 1

Here’s how you could fix your problem:

def myfunc(w):
    y = [el[:] for el in w]
    y[0].append('What do I need to do to get this to work here?')
    y[0].append('When I search for the manual, I get pointed to python.org, but I can\'t find the answer there.')
    return y

x = [[]]
z = myfunc(x)
print(x)

The thing about [:] is that it’s a shallow copy. You could also import deepcopy from the copy module to achieve the correct result.