What is the difference between shallow copy, deepcopy and normal assignment operation?

import copy

a = "deepak"
b = 1, 2, 3, 4
c = [1, 2, 3, 4]
d = {1: 10, 2: 20, 3: 30}

a1 = copy.copy(a)
b1 = copy.copy(b)
c1 = copy.copy(c)
d1 = copy.copy(d)


print("immutable - id(a)==id(a1)", id(a) == id(a1))
print("immutable - id(b)==id(b1)", id(b) == id(b1))
print("mutable - id(c)==id(c1)", id(c) == id(c1))
print("mutable - id(d)==id(d1)", id(d) == id(d1))

I get the following results:

immutable - id(a)==id(a1) True
immutable - id(b)==id(b1) True
mutable - id(c)==id(c1) False
mutable - id(d)==id(d1) False

If I perform deepcopy:

a1 = copy.deepcopy(a)
b1 = copy.deepcopy(b)
c1 = copy.deepcopy(c)
d1 = copy.deepcopy(d)

results are the same:

immutable - id(a)==id(a1) True
immutable - id(b)==id(b1) True
mutable - id(c)==id(c1) False
mutable - id(d)==id(d1) False

If I work on assignment operations:

a1 = a
b1 = b
c1 = c
d1 = d

then results are:

immutable - id(a)==id(a1) True
immutable - id(b)==id(b1) True
mutable - id(c)==id(c1) True
mutable - id(d)==id(d1) True

Can somebody explain what exactly makes a difference between the copies? Is it something related to mutable & immutable objects? If so, can you please explain it to me?

12 Answers
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