expanding a variable to a dict

[John Machin]

On Apr 4, 8:56 am, idle <spiro.har... at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got a variable in a loop that I'm trying to expand/translate/
> readdress as an existing dict so as to add some keys into it..
>
> eg; I have a set of existing dicts: dictFoo, dictBar, dictFrotz (names
> changed to protect the innocent)
>
> now I'd like to check them all for the existence of certain default
> keys; ie, if the dicts don't contain the keys, add them in with
> default values.
>
> so, I've got:
>
> for a in ['dictFoo','dictBar','dictFrotz']:
>     if hasattr(a,'srcdir') == False:
>         a['srcdir']='/usr/src'
>
> the error I get (which I expect) is 'str' object doesn't support item
> assignment.
>
> what incantation do I cast on 'a' to make the interpreter parse it as
> 'dictFoo' on the first iteration, 'dictBar' on the second, and so
> forth?
>
> and/or less importantly, what is such a transformation called, to help
> me target my searching?
>

It's called "deleting extraneous apostrophes from source code".

Happy googling!