On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Ethan Furman <et...@stoneleaf.us> wrote: > --> def f(x, y): > > ... locals()[x] = y > ... print(vars()) > ... exec('print (' + x + ')') > ... print(x) > ... > --> f('a', 42) > > {'y': 42, 'x': 'a', 'a': 42} > 42 > a > > Indeed -- the point to keep in mind is that locals() can become out of sync > with the functions actual variables. Definitely falls in the camp of "if > you don't know *exactly* what you are doing, do not play this way!"
Sure, but that's not actually out of sync. The argument of your exec evaluates to 'print (a)'. You get two different results because you're actually printing two different variables. You can get the dict temporarily out of sync: >>> def f(x, y): ... frob = None ... loc = locals() ... loc[x] = y ... print(loc) ... print(locals()) ... print(loc) ... >>> f('frob', 42) {'y': 42, 'x': 'frob', 'frob': 42, 'loc': {...}} {'y': 42, 'x': 'frob', 'frob': None, 'loc': {...}} {'y': 42, 'x': 'frob', 'frob': None, 'loc': {...}} In this case, 'frob' is updated to 42 in the dict, but the optimized local is not updated. Calling locals() again refreshes the dict. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list