Python introspection and namespace weird question

[Chris Rebert]

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Rayene Ben Rayana
<rayene.benrayana at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Chris,
>
> Yeah it is kinda meta thing. My app allows to create a scene (a set of GUI
> objects). A scene can be saved as a python script. And, it can be loaded
> again using execfile().
>
> each GUI object has a label. So, in the script scene, declaring an object in
> a scene file should look like this:
>
> red_car = MyVehicleClass(label = 'red_car')
>
> But, I wanted to simplify the syntax of scene files and avoid repetition so
> it would look like
>
> red_car = MyVehicleClass()
>
> with the label attribute automatically set to the name of the corresponding
> variable.
> I tried your locals().iteritems tip and it works perfectly.
>
> The question now is: Given what I just explained, do you still think it is
> bad programming to do that ? Should I better use the first syntax ?

Assuming the object declarations are all at the module-level and you
have some rule for dealing with objects with multiple "names", using
the trick I outlined but with globals() instead of locals() seems
reasonable, albeit a bit of a hack, but since this is just a script,
that seems acceptable. IMHO, it's an OK trade-off in order to comply
with the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle in this case.

Cheers,
Chris
-- 
Follow the path of the Iguana...
http://rebertia.com

>
> Cheers,
>
> Rayene,
>
> I want to use that to simplify the syntax of the
>
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:37 PM, Chris Rebert <clp at rebertia.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 6:04 AM, Rayene Ben Rayana
>> <rayene.benrayana at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hello everybody,
>> >
>> > Is there an easy way to do something like this in python ?
>> >
>> >>>> red_car = MyVehicleClass()
>> >>>> car = red_car
>> >>>> car.labels()
>> > ['red_car' , 'car' ]
>> >
>> > In other words, does an instance has access to its name pointers ?
>>
>> In short, No. (Cue another debate over whether Python uses call-by-X
>> semantics...)
>>
>> Typically people who want to do such things actually want/should use a
>> dictionary mapping string keys to instance values instead.
>>
>> Note that in certain limited cases, voodoo involving the locals() or
>> globals() built-in functions or the `inspect` module can work, but not
>> in the common general case. But generally these techniques are
>> considered bad style and kludgey unless you're writing a debugger or
>> something equally meta, with using a dictionary as explained
>> previously being much preferred.
>>
>> For example, for your particular code above, the following happens to
>> work:
>> [name for name, obj in locals().iteritems() if obj is car] #==>
>> ['red_car' , 'car' ]
>>
>> But this will only give the names in the current function of the
>> particular car object. Likewise, globals() works only for module-level
>> names, and the `inspect` module's magic only works for names in
>> calling functions (i.e. those below the current one in the callstack).
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>> --
>> Follow the path of the Iguana...
>> http://rebertia.com
>>
>> >
>> > Thanks in advance,
>> >
>> > Rayene
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>> >
>> >