Question

In ps5, I cannot get "def is_valid_word" from mutating my "hand". Even if I use temphand = hand.copy(), it still mutates my hand dictionary. does anyone know how to stop this?

Answer 1

hand is a frequency dictionary? dict.copy() should work:
```
>>> d = {'a':1, 'b':2}
>>> b = d.copy()
>>> d == b
True
>>> d is b
False
>>>
```

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Answer 2

hand == temphand is true.
hand is temphand is false.
http://dpaste.com/1408980/
even though I only use temphand in the is_valid_word function, temphand does not mutate, only hand mutates!

Answer 3

When using a for loop, you can iterate over the elements of a sequence directly, you don't have create indices then index into the sequence. See the changes I made to available_letters(). I also made a comment at line 24, it might help your problem.
http://dpaste.com/1409714/

http://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/controlflow.html#for-statements
http://www.diveintopython.net/file_handling/for_loops.html
http://effbot.org/zone/python-for-statement.htm

Answer 4

I really appreciate your response. I really like the adjustments you made to the for loop. I didn't realize that could be done, it makes things much nicer and far less confusing. It turns out that the reason that this code wasn't working is that I used the "temphand = hand.copy()" outside the function that uses "temphand" and then passed it into the function. For some reason, I still don't know why, when I do this it keeps changing the original "hand" dictionary. This mutation doesn't happen if I put the "temphand = hand.copy()" within the function that uses it.

Answer 5

So you create a new variable temp_hand at line three, this is a copy of hand and it is the one you want to use. At line 25, what do you pass to available_letters()

```
a = available_letters(word, hand)
```

Answer 6

yes, I created the variable temp_hand at line three, but it won't work if I do that. For it to work, I need to wait until line eight and create temp-hand there. At line 25, I am passing True or False statements to the variables. The function is to test to see if a word passes two word tests. The two functions within the function are just the two different word tests. Then if both of them are True, line 30 returns a True for the encompassing function.

Answer 7

nope. you create a copy, temp_hand, then you pass the original hand to available_letters, that is why it was mutating the original hand.