How can I get the name of an object???

[Mark Jackson]

Sean Blakey <sblakey at freei.com> writes:
> Peter,
> Python objects do not have any way of finding out what name they are
> referenced by.  Names refer to objects, but objects do not have name.
> 
> This is reasonable, since it is simple for an object to have 0, 1, or
> more names.  Imagine what an imaginary __name__ attribute would be in
> the following cases:
> >>>class A:
> ....  pass
> ....
> >>>A().__name__		# What should this be? ''?
> >>>a = A()
> >>>b = a		# b and a are now two names for the same object
> >>>b.__name__		# Should this be 'a', 'b', or ['a', 'b']?
> 
> There are some clever hacks to attempt this (like iterating through all
> the names in globals() looking for a match with the object), but I have
> not seen any that are completely effective.

Right.  Consider also the following:

>>> a=999
>>> b=999
>>> c=b
>>> a is b
0
>>> b is c
1

All fine; c and b are the same, a just "happens" to be equal.  But

>>> c=1
>>> d=1
>>> c is d
1

Because of implementation details (driven by considerations of
efficiency), there will be instances of "accidental" identity.  Unless
the objective is tolerant of this, any scheme to find *the* name of an
object would seem to be doomed.

-- 
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
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