Namedtuples: some unexpected inconveniences

[Peter Otten]

Deborah Swanson wrote:

>> >value = getattr(record, label)
>>
>> That should work.
> 
> We may agree that it *should* work, by an intuitive grasp of how it
> should work, but it doesn't. You get "object has no attribute 'label'.

Only if the namedtuple 

(1) does not have a label attribute and
(2) the value of the name label is the string "label"

In that case both

label = "label"
getattr(record, label)

and

record.label

will fail with the same AttributeError. The problem is *not* the dynamic 
access through getattr().

>> Indeed you cannot change the namedtuple's attributes. Like the "normal"
>> tuple it is designed to be immutable. If you want changes in one list
>> (the group) to appear in another (the original records) you need a 
>> mutable data type.
> 
> Sadly, that does seem to be the correct conclusion here.

Think hard if you really need the original list.