determine returned object is copy or deepcopy

Question

I was thinking , what if, i has function which returns of copy or deepcopy of object depend on some logic. for random now.

from copy import copy,deepcopy
from random import choice


def just_copies(obj_to_copy):
    choices=[copy,deepcopy]
    func = choice(choices)
    return func(obj_to_copy)

some_list = [1,2,3,4,[5,6]]
copied_list = just_copies(some_list)
print("is ",copied_list," copy or deepcopy")

I was searching for answers, but can not find any other method than changing the list and seeing the outcome.

Answer 1

Loop through the original list and returned list, and test if any of the elements are different.

is_deepcopy = any(x is not y for x, y in zip(some_list, copied_list))

You need to use x is not y because comparing lists with != compares the contents recursively, not object identity.