Self-identifying functions and macro-ish behavior

[Iain King]

63q2o4i02 at sneakemail.com wrote:
> Hi, I was wondering how I may get a python function to know what its
> name is without me having to write it manually?  For example:
>
> def func1():
>     <do some stuff1>
>     print 'func1'
>     return True
>
> def func2():
>     <do some stuff2>
>     print 'func2'
>     return True
>
> should be more like
> def func1():
>     <do some stuff 1>
>     print <self-name>
>     return True
>
> def func2():
>     <do some stuff 2>
>     print <self-name>
>     return True
>
> I imagine this means things like closures which I'm not familiar with
> (I'm not a CS person).  In this case, each function is part of a class,
> so I imagine I can take a dir() of the class if necessary.

Yeah, I think these are closures (though when I learnt CS we didn't get
taught them).  Try this:

def makeFunction(name):
    def func():
        <do stuff>
        print name
        return True
    return func

func1 = makeFunction('func1')
func2 = makeFunction('func2')

>
> This leads into my next related question, which is How do I get some
> sort of macro behavior so I don't have to write the same thing over and
> over again, but which is also not neatly rolled up into a function,
> such as combining the return statements with a printing of <self-name>?

I think I've answered this too?

Iain