generating variable names on fly in python

Question

Is there a way I can generate variable names in python in a loop and assign values to them  For example  if I have  prices    5  12  45    I want  price1   5 price2   12 price3   45   Can I do this in a loop or something instead of manually assigning price1   prices 0   price2   prices 1  etc   Thank you    EDIT  Many people suggested that I write a reason for requiring this  First  there have been times where I have thought this may be more convenient than using a list   I don t remember exactly when  but I think I have thought of using this when there are many levels of nesting  For example  if one has a list of lists of lists  defining variables in the above way may help reduce the level of nesting  Second  today I thought of this when trying to learn use of Pytables  I just came across Pytables and I saw that when defining the structure of a table  the column names and types are described in the following manner   class TableFormat tables IsDescription       firstColumnName   StringCol 16      secondColumnName   StringCol 16      thirdColumnName   StringCol 16    If I have 100 columns  typing the name of each column explicitly seems a lot of work  So  I wondered whether there is a way to generate these column names on the fly

User · Answer

On an object  you can achieve this with setattr   gt  gt  gt  class A object   pass  gt  gt  gt  a A    gt  gt  gt  setattr a   hello1   5   gt  gt  gt  a hello1 5

User · Answer

Another example  which is really a variation of another answer  in that it uses a dictionary too    gt  gt  gt  vr         for num in range 1 4            vr str num     5   num           gt  gt  gt  print vr  3   8  gt  gt  gt

User · Answer

If you really want to create them on the fly you can assign to the dict that is returned by either globals   or locals   depending on what namespace you want to create them in   globals    somevar      someval  print somevar    prints  someval    But I wouldn t recommend doing that  In general  avoid global variables  Using locals   often just obscures what you are really doing  Instead  create your own dict and assign to it   mydict      mydict  somevar      someval  print mydict  somevar     Learn the python zen  run this and grok it well    gt  gt  gt  import this

User · Answer

I got your problem   and here is my answer   prices    5  12  45  list   1   2   3    for i in range 1 3     vars    prices  list 0   prices 0  print   prices i     prices i     so while printing    price1   5  price2   12 price3   45

User · Answer

Though I don t see much point  here it is   for i in xrange 0  len prices        exec  price d    s     i   1  repr prices i

User · Answer

bit long  it works i guess     prices    5  12  45  names      for i    in enumerate prices       names append  price  str i 1   dict      for name  price in zip names  prices       dict name    price for item in dict      print item       dict item

[python] generating variable names on fly in python

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