Printing variable names

[Mark McEahern]

Mike wrote:

>mylist = [a, b, c]
>
>I want to print out the names of the variables in mylist (not the
>values of a, b, and c).  How do I go about doing this.  Thanks.
>
>Mike
>  
>
There's no simple answer to this.  Consider the fact that you can have 
more than one name bound to any given mutable instance.  What if:

  a = range(10)
  b = a

mylist = [a]

what name do you want printed for the first item in mylist--'a' or 'b'?

One idea is to use a dictionary instead.  Then:

for key, value in mydict.iteritems():
    print '%(key)s = %(value)s' % locals()

I'm curious what problem you're trying to solve.

Cheers,

// m