dynamic function names

[Michele Simionato]

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote in message news:<iP5ra.14084$3M4.382689 at news1.tin.it>...
> <posted & mailed>
> 
> Bram Stolk wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Is it possible in Python to define functions with a dynamic name?
> 
> Yes, but not with the def statement.
> 
> 
> > something like:
> > 
> > def make_func(funcname) :
> >   def funcname :
> 
> Syntax error -- you're missing parentheses here before the colon.
> 
> >     print "This func is named", funcname
> > 
> > make_func(foo)
> > make_func(bar)
> > 
> > The code above fails due to foo being unknown,
> > however, when calling as make_func("foo"), the "foo" string
> > cannot be used as a funcname.
> 
> Actually, if you fix the syntax error it will work, but not do
> what you want:
> 
> >>> def makefunc(funcname):
> ...   def funcname(): print "this function is named", funcname
> ...   return funcname
> ...
> >>> f = makefunc('foo')
> >>> f()
>  this function is named <function funcname at 0x402c09cc>
> >>>
> 
> See?  "def funcname():" *RE-BINDS* identifier funcname to
> refer to the function object.
> 
> So, what you need is to call function 'function' in module
> 'new'.  You can first build a temporary function with a def
> to give you the right code, globals, defaults and closure,
> and then pass each of these to new.function together with
> the funcname you want to use:
> 
> >>> import new
> >>> def makefunc(funcname):
> ...   def temp(): print "this function is named", funcname
> ...   f = new.function(temp.func_code, globals(), funcname,
> ...           temp.func_defaults, temp.func_closure)
> ...   return f
> ...
> >>> f = makefunc('foo')
> >>> f()
>  this function is named foo
> >>> f.func_name
>  'foo'
> >>>
> 
> 
> Alex

In Python 2.3 most types are callable and one can often avoid the 'new'
module. In this example 

new.function(temp.func_code, globals(), funcname,
             temp.func_defaults, temp.func_closure)

could be replaced with

types.FunctionType(temp.func_code, globals(), funcname,
                   temp.func_defaults, temp.func_closure)


In addition to that, I have a question I always wanted to ask ;) 
why I can change the name of a class (es. C.__name__='newC' works)
and I cannot change the name of a function (f.__name__='newf' does not
work) ?