pretty basic: get variable name from list of strings?

[Andrew Koenig]

chris> in the specific,
chris> if I have a list

chris> animals = ['horse_0', 'horse_1']
chris> horsenames = ['smokey', 'silver']

chris> how do assign variables with those strings as names? 

chris> ie, I want  
chris> horse_0 = "smokey"
chris> horse_1= "silver"

chris> but if I write animals[0] = "smokey", it replaces the value, it
chris> doesn't assign it.  What I want is like assign() or eval() in other
chris> languages.

chris> you can imagine i am trying to iterate over large indexes of
chris> animals[i] = 'horse_' + str(i)
chris> and then assign them from a value list

The first question to answer is why you want to have a whole bunch
of variable names instead of using a dict.

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark