How to eval a file

[Björn Lindberg]

bokr at oz.net (Bengt Richter) writes:

> If you'd posted a minimal example of what you did "without success,"
> with copy/paste of the screen interaction and/or test run, I'd bet you
> would know by now how to make it work ;-)

I tried something like this:

class C:
    def m(self):
        execfile("../collection/collection.layout")
        self.collection = collection

    def n(self):
        return self.collection

c = C()
c.m()
print c.n()

  File "/tmp/python-2494uy", line 6, in m
    self.collection = collection
NameError: global name 'collection' is not defined
>>> 

The file has a line with "collection = 'bla, bla....'" in it.

>  execfile(...)
>      execfile(filename[, globals[, locals]])
> 
>      Read and execute a Python script from a file.
>      The globals and locals are dictionaries, defaulting to the current
>      globals and locals.  If only globals is given, locals defaults to it.

So, if the globals and locals arguments defaults to the current scope,
why don't I have a global variable 'collection' when the execfile returns?

However, if I include a dictionary as a second argument to execfile(),
I can extract 'collection' from it, and it works like expected.


Björn