This is a dirty hack; it is not recommended to be used in “production” code. Also, I lay no claim to the originality of this hack; after I discovered it, a little googling yielded the fact that many other people have had the same brainwave.
This hack works courtesy Python’s exec statement, which allows dynamic execution of Python code; thanks are also due to the string formatting / interpolation operator, %.
#Creating a variable called "new_variable" on the fly varname = "new_variable" value = range(1,10) exec "%s = %s" % (varname, value) print new_variable
Voila!
How the hack works is more or less self-explanatory. A brief look at section 6.14 of the Python reference manual should clear doubts, if any.
I’m using this hack for a “user-friendly” – or should I say user over-friendly – interface to something. I put in the “not recommended for production code” warning because I feel this is an ugly hack. Why is this an ugly hack? I don’t know! Variables appearing out of thin air all by themselves doesn’t seem right to me! Using a sleight of hand trick to achieve the effect doesn’t seem right either.
