Michael Williams wrote: > Thanks, Heiko, I'll give this a try. In the meantime, I'll try to > explain what exactly I mean. > > Basically, I want the ability to reference a variable just as I am > able to set a variable (or attribute) on the fly. For instance, say > the user has the following list in a text file: > > [butter, cream, eggs, toast, jam]
list of what? what's butter? a variable? a string? did you mean ["butter", "cream", "eggs", "toast", "jam"] or did you mean something else? (probably something else, since whatever the user has put in the text file seems to have a value property in your later examples). > I want to be able to loop through that and say the following: > > item.__setattr__(list[0].value,myclass()) that's spelled setattr(item, list[0].value, myclass()) in python. to add attributes for all items in the list, do: for v in list: setattr(item, v.value, myclass()) if the list contains strings, you can simply do: for v in list: setattr(item, v, myclass()) > At that point I have item.butter, but I don't want to have to know > (or hardcode) this, I want to then be able to do the following: > > item.__getattr__(list[0].value).__setattr__(list[1].value) so the list is in fact a path? how about this = item for v in list[:-1]: this = getattr(this, v) setattr(this, list[-1], myclass()) hope this helps! </F> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list