I am making a puzzle game in a command terminal. I have three arrays for the level, originlevel, which is the unaltered level that the game will return to if you restart the level. Emptylevel is the level without the player. Level is just the level. I need all 3, because I will be changing the space around the player.

def Player(matrix,width):
    originlevel = matrix
    emptylevel = matrix
    emptylevel[PlayerPositionFind(matrix)]="#"
    level = matrix

The expected result is that it would set one entry to "#" in the emptylevel array, but it actually sets all 3 arrays to the same thing! My theory is that the arrays are somehow linked because they are originally said to the same thing, but this ruins my code entirely! How can I make the arrays separate, so changing one would not change the other?

I should not that matrix is an array, it is not an actual matrix.

I tried a function which would take the array matrix, and then just return it, thinking that this layer would unlink the arrays. It did not. (I called the function IHATEPYTHON).

I've also read that setting them to the same array is supposed to do this, but I didn't actually find an answer how to make them NOT do that. Do I make a function which is just something like

for i in range(0,len(array)):
    newarray.append(array[i])
return newarray

I feel like that would solve the issue but that's so stupid, can I not do it in another way?

CodePudding user response：

This issue is caused by the way variables work in Python. If you want more background on why this is happening, you should look up 'pass by value versus pass by reference'.

In order for each of these arrays to be independent, you need to create a copy each time you assign it. The easiest way to do that is to use an array slice. This means you will get a new copy of the array each time.

def Player(matrix,width):
    originlevel = matrix[:]
    emptylevel = matrix[:]
    emptylevel[PlayerPositionFind(matrix)]="#"
    level = matrix[:]