Quick Python: Copy Decorator
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If you want to guarantee that your function doesn’t modify any of the references and don’t mind paying a price in memory consumption, here is a decorator you can easily add to your functions.
from copy import deepcopy
def copy_arguments(func):
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
new_args = deepcopy(args)
new_kwargs = deepcopy(kwargs)
return func(*new_args, **new_kwargs)
return wrapper
Example usage:
@copy_arguments
def modify1(xs):
for i, _ in enumerate(xs):
xs[i] *= 2
Comparison:
def modify2(xs):
for i, _ in enumerate(xs):
xs[i] *= 2
a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
b = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
modify1(a)
modify2(a)
print(a)
print(b)
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[2, 4, 6, 8, 10]