How to get all the variables in a python shell

[lixinyi.23 at gmail.com]

Hi!

I'm currently working on a scientific computation software built in
python.
What I want to implement is a Matlab style command window <->
workspace interaction.

For example, you type 'a=1' in the command window, and you see a list
item named 'a' in the workspace.
You double click the icon of the item, and you see its value. You can
modify the value of the list item,
1 -> 100 etc,  after which if you go back to the command window and
type 'a'  and press enter, you see that
varable a's value has been changed to 100.

So my question is : if you have two DOS command windows running under
WINDOWS OS, how can you make them share the same internal variable
buffer? Or is there any easier way to implement such kind of
interaction?

Maybe I could just build a small database to store all the values and
access them from both programs, but chances are sometimes I have to
deal with big arrays, and they will eat extra memory if I keep them in
a database. Is there anyway to access a shell's local memory buffer?
I tried to use shell.interp.locals() in wxPython, but there's too many
variables in the list which I don't actually need.

Come on guys, give me some ideas. Thanks in advance!