pretty basic: get variable name from list of strings?

[Benji]

chris wrote:
> in the specific,
> 
> if I have a list
> 
> animals = ['horse_0', 'horse_1']
> horsenames = ['smokey', 'silver']
> 
> how do assign variables with those strings as names? 
> 
> ie, I want  
> horse_0 = "smokey"
> horse_1= "silver"
> 
> but if I write animals[0] = "smokey", it replaces the value, it
> doesn't assign it.  What I want is like assign() or eval() in other
> languages.
> 
> you can imagine i am trying to iterate over large indexes of
> animals[i] = 'horse_' + str(i)
> and then assign them from a value list
> 
> or even screw the variable list and instead iterate over the
> value list
> 'horse_' + str(i) = horsenames[i].
> 
> but i'm missing the key command to tell python "treat this string like
> code and not a string."
> 
> thx,
> chris

As Andrew pointed out, you probably would be better off using a dict, 
but if you must use variables, you could use the "globals" and "vars" 
builtin functions which both return a dict of objects and variables 
respectiveley.

I'm not sure how they differ, but "vars" may return the dict of 
variables from the local namespace... ie: if you're in a function, 
"vars" may return the local variables while globals returns the global 
variables. This is just a guess though, anywy, here's how you could do it:

vars()['horse_' + str(i)] = horsenames[i]
or
globals()['horse_' + str(i)] = horsenames[i]

Again though, you should look into using a dict =),

benji