On Oct 16, 2008, at 10:59 AM, Larry Bates wrote:
how do i find that the name is 'bob'
Short answer is that you can't. This because Python's names (bob)
are bound to objects (modulename.objectname()). They are NOT
variables as they are in "other" programming languages.
Which other programming languages? I've never seen an OOP language
that didn't work the same way as Python.
However, 'bob' here really is a variable. It's a variable whose value
(at the moment) is a reference to some object.
It is perfectly legal in Python to bind multiple names to a single
object:
a=b=c=modulename.objectname()
Right -- three variables (a, b, and c) that all have the same value,
i.e. all refer to the same object. There's nothing more mysterious
here than
i=j=k=42
where i, j, and k all have the same value. (The OP's question would
be like asking "what is the name of the variable referring to 42? And
while you might, in theory, be able to produce a list of all such
variables by trolling through the Python's internals, it's a bit of a
silly thing to do.)
a, b, and c all point to the same object. An object can have an
unlimited number of names bound to it. This is one of the most
difficult concepts for many beginning Python programmers to
understand (I know I had a difficult time at first). It is just not
how we taught ourselves to think about "variables" and you can write
quite a lot of Python treating the names you bind to objects like
they were "variables".
Well, they are variables. I'm not quite grasping the difficulty
here... unless perhaps you were (at first) thinking of the variables
as holding the object values, rather than the object references. That
is indeed something important to grasp, since it explains why if you do
a = b # where b was some object with an attribute 'foo'...
a.foo = 42
...you now find that b.foo is 42 too. Nothing mysterious once you
realize that the value of a and b is a reference to some object that
has a "foo" attribute.
Not sure if all this was helpful to anyone, but I hope so!
Best,
- Joe
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