Edit variable using variable that contains reference to said variable-CodePudding

Imagine I have:

x = 2
y = x
y = 3

Output:

x = 2
y = 3

What I want:

 x = 3

Right now, as I have it, this doesn't set x to 3, but y to 3. How can I change this so y acts as a pointer to x. I want to edit x, not y. Previously, I believe I saw a page about using mutable variables. I don't think I completely understand how variables work in Python.

CodePudding user response：

You could use a list:

x = [2]
y = x
y[0] = 3
print(x)

Output:

[3]

CodePudding user response：

It is because int type is immutable in python, and the refference from y variable to x is not created when you try to do that. You can easily check it just by printing id(x) and id(y).

If you don't want to use a list, as Erik McKelvey recomended to you, you can try this https://pypi.org/project/mutableint/