[Python-ideas] Quick idea: defining variables from functions that take the variable name

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 09:04:29PM +0200, Sven R. Kunze wrote:

> I consider a special syntax for this narrow kind of usecase way too much 
> as it doesn't seem very flexible and extensible in the future.
> 
> Dunder methods/attributes/variables allow far more.

There's nothing to extend. It's a simple problem: how to give the right 
hand side of an assignment access to the name of the assignment target 
without having to type the name again as a string.

If you think that problem is too trivial to bother solving, that's a 
reasonable opinion to hold.

But if you want to extend it to solve "far more" (whatever you mean by 
that), please don't hijack this thread. If you think of some other 
problems you would like to solve (whatever they might be), please feel 
free to propose a solution to them in another thread. But *this* 
discussion is about solving *this problem*:

    Some (but not all) functions need to know the name of their 
    assignment target, so that the object they return can give 
    itself a name that matches that target. Or to put it another 
    way, some objects need to know their own name. The existing
    solution to that is simple, but inelegant and annoying: you
    have to manually type the name as a string and pass it as an
    argument to the function.

If you want to solve some other problem, please do! But that's not part 
of this thread, and if the proposed solution to *this* problem doesn't 
solve *your* problem, that's irrelevant.


-- 
Steve