Thanks for all the replies and yes I realize the associated issue of doing something like this.
For simplicity sake, let's say I need to do something like this (for whatever reason): <prompt for name of variable in someother program space you wish to retrieve> <go retrieve the value from that other program> <assign the retrieved value to a variable of the same name in Python> In situations like this, I wouldn't know the name of the variable in Python I need to use ahead of time and so I would have to somehow convert a string to be used as variable. Of course, I can create a dictionary to keep track of which variable has what name and this method of using exec should be avoid if at all possible. I am just trying to understand the language and see what it can do. -- It's me "Steven Bethard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > It's me wrote: > > How do I do something like this: > > > > I know that > > > > a = 3 > > y = "a" > > print eval(y) > > > > would give me a print out of 3 - but how do I do something to the effect of: > > > > eval(y) = 4 # hopefully the value of a gets changed to 4 > > Generally, if you find yourself doing this, you may want to rethink your > program organization. That being said, if you are in the global scope, > one option looks something like: > > >>> a = 3 > >>> y = 'a' > >>> globals()[y] = 4 > >>> a > 4 > > If you can give us some more context on why you want to do this, we can > probably suggest a better approach. There aren't too many places where > even advanced Python programmers need to use eval... > > Steve -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
