Create a variable "on the fly"

[Sybren Stuvel]

Paul D.Smith enlightened us with:
> The background is that I've inherited some historical Python scripts
> that need to be configured from a bash shell script [...] instead of
> the existing Pything config script. [...] The problem is that this
> config file is almost certainly not complete [...] and I don't want
> to spend my life tweaking not one config file (the shell script),
> but two (the shell script and the Python script).

So basically you want environment variables to be able to alter Python
variables. This is not a smart move. It's the same as the
'register_globals' functionality in PHP. Read
http://us2.php.net/register_globals for more information.

> 2. A simple Python config which searches for all shell environment
> variables named "MY_..." and instantiates then as Python variables.

Why don't you just copy all MY_... environment variables from
os.environ to the dict which holds your configuration? Or are you
storing your entire configuration in global variables? A dict would be
a much cleaner and more extendible solution.

Sybren
-- 
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? 
                                             Frank Zappa