Several functions have mutable default arguments

[rileyjmurray]

I came across a function in pygsti version 0.9.11.2 that has a mutable default argument. This can lead to nasty bugs, as described here. Once I found the first bug of this kind, I ran some searches and found several more. See below for a list.

Search results

I ran a regex search for strings of the form =[]<characters here>): [1] and found the following hits:

If I search for strings of the form ={}<characters here>): [2], I get

Footnotes

[Footnote 1] <insert characters here> is a placeholder for any character sequence that excludes new lines. The actual regex I used was =\[\].+\):. Note that this doesn't capture all possible cases where we have mutable default arguments, since it will miss cases of multi-line function definitions where the mutable argument isn't on the last line.

[Footnote 2] The actual regex I used was =\{\}.+\):.

You can search for both patterns I checked with =[\{\[][\}\]].+\):.

[sserita]

Closed with release of 0.9.12.