Printing a variable's name not its value

[travislspencer at gmail.com]

Hey,

I am trying to write a function that takes an arbitrary number of
arguments and does one of two things.  If the variable is a key in a
dictionary, it prints the key and its value.  Otherwise, if any of the
variables isn't in the dictionary, the function prints the variable's
name and value.

Here is what I have so far:

globals = {}
HOME_DIR = "The user's home directory"
SHELL = "The user's shell"

def someFunction():
    someString = "This is a test"
    globals[VERBOSE] = True
    globals[HOME_DIR] = os.getenv("HOME")
    globals[SHELL] = os.getenv("SHELL")

    printVerbose(someString, HOME_DIR, SHELL)

def printVerbose(*args):
    if VERBOSE in globals:
        for a in args:
            value = ""

            if a in globals:
                value = globals[a]
#            else
#                a = a.__name__
#                value = a

            print "%s: %s" % (a, value)

This prints something like this:

The user's home directory: /home/tspencer
The use's shell: zsh

But what I would like it to print is this:

The user's home directory: /home/tspencer
The use's shell: zsh
someString: This is a test

I've been told on #python that there isn't a way to get a variable's
name.  I hope this isn't so.  If it helps, I am trying to do something
like what the C preprocessor's # operator does.

TIA.

--

Regards,

Travis Spencer