Re: [PATCH] Minor doc fix for Python Type.fields

[Paul Koning <paulkoning@comcast.net>]

> On Nov 5, 2025, at 2:05 PM, Tom Tromey <tromey@adacore.com> wrote:
> 
>>> * Documents that a new sequence is always returned I've intentionally
>>> not mentioned that it is currently a list, in case we want to change
>>> to a tuple someday.
> 
> Paul> Why is it important to say that a new sequence is returned?  It
> Paul> seems to me that someday we may want to return the same sequence
> Paul> if thisis called multiple times.
> 
> Yeah, I guess it isn't needed always.
> Like if gdb ever returned a tuple, it could be memoized.
> I wonder if Python has some idiomatic way to say "this is guaranteed to
> either return a tuple or a new list"
> 
> Or if we should just write 'new list' and commit gdb to not memoizing.
> 
> Tom

My point is slightly different.  No matter what sequence type is returned, for a given Type object the value of the sequence returned would be the same if you call that method twice, right?  So if I do:

	a = sometype.fields()
	b = sometype.fields()

then a == b.  The statement "new sequence" promises that "a is not b", i.e., a and b are not the same object.  But I see no reason why that is a useful property, and whether a and b are lists or tuples, it would be reasonable for "a is b" to hold.  (Reasonable though not required.)

	paul