Python mutable default function arguments are static
This particular quirk of Python has been discussed in various places before, but I think it bears repeating as it’s different to the behaviour that you might intuitively expect and consequently catches a lot of people out when writing class methods. When declaring a function or a class method, any default arguments are only evaluated at the point when the function is declared, not when the function is called. For mutable default arguments such as lists or dictionaries, this has the effect of making them static. Consider the following example: