How do I do this? (eval() on the left hand side)

[Peter Otten]

Caleb Hattingh wrote:

> I am convinced now that locals() doesn't work as (I) expected.  Steven
> says there was some or other reason why locals() as used in this context
> is not writable - Do you know why this is?  I really do not like
> guidelines like "may not work", "is unreliable" and so on.  Perhaps this
> is a character flaw, but I really do like to know what works, when it
> works, and when it doesn't work.

I think Peter Hansen has answered that. Your expectations were just wrong.
 
> In this scenario, we can see it doesn't work.  To my eyes, it doesn't work
> *in the way I expect* (which is highly subjective, no argument there).
> Would this be a situation where it would be nice to have an exception
> thrown if locals() is assigned to in a scope where it is not writable?

If python were to throw an exception, it should always be thrown. But I'm
the wrong one to worry about that as I didn't even find a single 

globals()[name] = value 

assignment in my scripts. I want to know a variable's name, or I put it in a
dictionary.

> It would also be nice if globals and locals behaved the same, differing
> only in scope (which is what I expected originally anyway).  But we can't
> have everything, I guess :)

That would mean that both would become read-only, I guess, but I don't see
that happen.

Peter