That's interesting and I take your point. Maybe there is a better way. Here is what I am doing now. (working)
I start with a text file of ticker symbols. I read each symbol and stick it in a list, retrieve the data for it from MySQL, do a trivial smoothing and pass the data to a modeling routine. I read the tickers into a list, self.symbols. Then for each ticker I create a list, self._0, self._1, ... and a list for the smoothed values, self._0_smooth, self._1_smooth, ... I end up with data I can access with self.__dict__["_" + str(var)] and a matching symbol which I can access self.symbols[var]. Ideas for a better approach gladly accepted. jab -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list