Building a function call?

[Francois De Serres]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:

>On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:16:54 -0700, Robert Kern wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Duncan Booth wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Francois De Serres wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Having a string: "dothat"
>>>>and a tuple: (x, y)
>>>>1. What's the best way to build a function call like: dothat(x,y)?
>>>>        
>>>>
>[snip]
>  
>
>>>No, none of this is a good place to use eval.
>>>      
>>>
>[snip]
>  
>
>>>   import otherModule
>>>   vars(otherModule)[aString](*aTuple)
>>>      
>>>
>>Ick! Please:
>>getattr(otherModule, aString)(*aTuple)
>>    
>>
>
>
>Or, remember that functions are first class objects in Python. Instead of
>passing around the function name as a string, pass around a reference to
>the function itself. Something like this:
>
>
>def dothis(x,y):
>    return x-y
>
>def dothat(x,y):
>    return x+y
>
>somefunction = dothis
>somefunction(3, 2)
>=> returns 1
>
>somefunction = dothat
>somefunction(3, 2)
>=> returns 5
>
>allfunctions = [dothis, dothat]
>for func in allfunctions:
>    print func(3, 2)
>=> prints 1 then 5
>
>If you want to collect user-supplied strings and use them to find a
>function, you could use eval (terribly risky and unsafe), or you could do
>something like this:
>
>funcnames = {}
>for func in allfunctions:
>    funcnames[func.__name__] = func
>F = raw_input("Enter the name of a function: ")
>try:
>    funcnames[F](3, 2)
>except KeyError:
>    print "Function '%s' not found!" % F
>
>
>In my humble opinion, people muck about with eval, locals and globals far
>too often. It is unclear, hard to maintain, and frequently a security
>risk. These confusing, unsafe practices can usually be avoided by
>remembering that functions are first class objects just like ints, strings
>and lists.
>
>
>
>  
>
I'm aware of the functions being objects, but I really need to work with 
strings in that case.
Still, I was not aware that eval() was such a 'rogue', it's not said in 
the manuals ;)
Many thanks!
F.