Simpler way to create dictionary of separate variables?

python string variables
e-satis picture e-satis · Mar 31, 2010 · Viewed 232.8k times · Source

I would like to be able to get the name of a variable as a string but I don't know if Python has that much introspection capabilities. Something like:

>>> print(my_var.__name__)
'my_var'

I want to do that because I have a bunch of variables I'd like to turn into a dictionary like :

bar = True
foo = False
>>> my_dict = dict(bar=bar, foo=foo)
>>> print my_dict 
{'foo': False, 'bar': True}

But I'd like something more automatic than that.

Python have locals() and vars(), so I guess there is a way.

Answer

rlotun picture rlotun · Mar 31, 2010

As unwind said, this isn't really something you do in Python - variables are actually name mappings to objects.

However, here's one way to try and do it:

 >>> a = 1
 >>> for k, v in list(locals().iteritems()):
         if v is a:
             a_as_str = k
 >>> a_as_str
 a
 >>> type(a_as_str)
 'str'

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