use str as variable name

[Fredrik Lundh]

Mathieu Prevot wrote:

> I have a program that take a word as argument, and I would like to
> link this word to a class variable.
> 
> eg.
> class foo():
>   width = 10
>   height = 20
> 
> a=foo()
> arg='height'
> a.__argname__= new_value
> 
> rather than :
> 
> if arg == 'height':
>   a.height = new_value
> elif arg == 'width';
>   a.width = new_value
> 
> Can I do this with python ? How ?

assuming you mean "instance variable" ("a" is an instance of the class 
"foo"), you can use setattr:

     a = foo()
     arg = 'height'
     setattr(a, arg, new_value)

</F>