[Python-ideas] Quick idea: defining variables from functions that take the variable name

[Guido van Rossum]

In mypy we have a need for type variables, which are created like this:

  from typing import TypeVar

  T = TypeVar('T')

I just saw a lightning talk about sympy where they define symbols to
be used in mathematical equations, like this:

  from sympy import Symbol

  x = Symbol('x')

I'm sure this is not a new idea, but so far I've always thought that
this is pretty esoteric and the approach here is good enough. But
maybe we can actually do better, and whatever solution we come up with
might also be useful for extracting attributes from an object or
values from a mapping?

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)