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musou OP wrote

Reply to comment by flabberghaster in ruby lets you put an array inside itself by musou

it's cool to know that python can do it too. i guess i should make a list of which languages can and can't do it.

it's super fun to think about, but i still can't come up with any way in which i could exploit it to do something fun or useful in order to make straightlaced programmers care about it

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flabberghaster wrote

I think that it's basically a special case of how in those languages it's easy to assign a reference to things. Adding a list to itself is not really that different than assigning a reference to an object as a member of itself. For instance in python you can do:

class Node:
    __init__(self, value, next=None):
        self.value = value
        self.next = next

def main():
    head = Node("last")
    tail = head
    for i in range(10): head = Node(i, head)
    tail.next = head

And this creates a cyclic linked list. You could just as easily assign a = Node(9); a.next = a and have the graph have only one vertex. It's the same principle with adding a list to itself: you're not actually adding the list to itself; rather you're putting a reference to the container, inside the container. Like writing down the location of a bank on a slip of paper, then putting that slip of paper inside a safe deposit box stored inside the same bank.

3

musou OP wrote

yeah! this is a good explanation of why it works. i'm mostly interested in figuring out ways to use recursive arrays that are practically useful, or at least interesting. but i still have nothing so far ._.

1