expanding string variables

[Michaell Taylor]

Please excuse the newbie question....but...

I have 7 sets of 20 dictionaries upon which I need to perform mathematical
transformations.  That is, for simplicity assume that I have :

first1 = {'firstelement': 45 ....., 'fifty': 89}
first2 = {...}
...
first20 = {...}
second1 = {...}
...
second20 = {...}
..
seven20 = {...}

(each dictionary has 50 elements)

I would like to code:

dict_set_list = {"first second ... seven"}
set = string.splitfield(dict_set_list)
for group in set:
	group = group1[index]*group2[index]...etc

(I loop over 'index' elsewhere) That is, I would like for the term "group"
to be expanded to first, second, ...seven, Thus
allowing python to process:

	first = first1[index]*first2[index]...etc
	second = second1[index]*second2[index]..etc
	...
	seven = seven1[index]*seven2[index]...etc

Of course my actual problem is considerably more complex else I would simply
allow the code to proliferate. (I've rarely been accused of writting pretty
code...and don't even claim to be a programmer).  The actual math
expressions are considerably more complex, thus a single instance is easier
to debug than 20 such near identical instances.

I know that there is an obvious way to get this done, but this is my first
python program and I can't get the sytax of a highly speciallized
statistical language out of my mind (which incidently would do this pretty
much as written - give an delimiter or two here and there).

BTW so far Python has been a wonderful experience.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

===============================================
Michaell Taylor

Senior Economist, Reis.com, New York City, USA
Associate Professor of Political Science, NTNU, Trondheim Norway
Adjuct Professor of Public Policy, University of Durban, Durban, South
Africa