I want to do something like this in Python:
a_string = 'variable_name'
print('{0}'.format(variable_name))
That is, I want to extract a variable's name from the string and send it into .format(). How can I do?
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What do you want to be printed here?mgilson– mgilson2014-05-05 13:38:47 +00:00Commented May 5, 2014 at 13:38
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1if you have data in your variable names, you shouldn't.roippi– roippi2014-05-05 13:47:51 +00:00Commented May 5, 2014 at 13:47
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3 Answers
This, in general, is not considered a good practice - data should be data, and code should be code. There are, of course, exceptions to that general rule.
To do what you want, you can simply access the dictionary returned
by a call to vars:
a_string = 'variable_name'
print('{0}'.format(vars()[variable_name]))
vars checks the variable availability in the local context (the same as a call to locals())
Back to good practices: if you need strings to locate data in your program, you should check if you could not be using a dictionary instead of letting this data, with dynamic name, directly in a variable. One of the main purposes of dictionaries is allowing dynamic look-up of data.
Comments
The usual way is to use the dictionary form of str.format
>>> variable_name = 'hello'
>>> print('{variable_name}'.format(**vars()))
hello
Comments
You can do that as:
a_string = 'variable_name'
print('{0}'.format(globals()[a_string]))
Example
variable_name = 'hello'
a_string = 'variable_name'
>>> print('{0}'.format(globals()[a_string]))
hello