Question about using python as a scripting language

[Terry Reedy]

"heavydada" <jlara_garduno at hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1154910518.506581.26470 at b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I'm writing a small game in python and I need to be able to run some
> scripts inside the game. In the game I have these creatures each with
> some attributes like name and weight and an action. Right now I'm
> saving all this information in an XML file, which I parse whenever I
> need it. I can handle the attributes like name and weight because these
> are just values I can assign to a variable, but the action part is what
> has me stumped. Each of the creatures has a different action() function
> (as in, each does something different). I was wondering how I can read
> commands from the XML file and then execute them in the game. I read a
> document that talked about this, but it was written in Visual Basic and
> used a method called callByName or something like that. It could call a
> function simply by sending the name as a string parameter. I was
> wondering if there was an equivalent in python. I just need some way of
> being able to read from the file what function the program needs to
> call next. Any help is appreciated.

Suppose you have a file actions.py with some action functions:
def hop(self): ...
def skip(self): ...
def jump(self)

And a creature data file with entries with a field such as actionname = 
'skip' and a method of converting an entry for a creature into a creature 
class instance.

Then the action method for the creature class could look something like

import actions.py
class creature(whatever):
    def action(self):
        return getattr(actions, self.actionname)(self)

The is one way to 'call by name' in Python.

Terry Jan Reedy