namespace/dictionary quandry

[Jack Carter]

Peter,

Actually although your solution is a good one, it won't
really help me because of the nature of our command language.

We have commands in the form of:

    result = <command_name> <filename> -e <experiment_name>

I currently scan ahead for <command_name> and could do so for
the rest to prevent them from being evaluated by python by
packing them with quotes and then unpacking them later. The
problem lies in the case where the name being used in the
commandline may or may not be a formal name such as a filename
or may be a variable that will evaluate into a filename.

This will be used in a list of filenames or a list of experiment
names iterated through a for loop.

>>> for name in (['file1','file2','file3']):
...  expClose name
...
expClose: ['file1']
expClose: ['file2']
expClose: ['file3']

But when the user tries to use a formal name that is
not through a python variable he/she hits an undefine
name error:

>>> expClose file4
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
NameError: name 'file4' is not defined

If I prescan the <filename> and pack it with quotes I
lose the python evaluation of the name.

The same problem will occur with all my other option arguments
for which there are many.

The solution it would seem would be to do the evaluation
later within the called function. That way I could assume
that all failed eval()'ed names are literals meant for my
command and not a python variable/name.

If this makes sense, the problem I need to solve is how to
deliver the correct namespace dictionary to the called function
so I can invoke eval with it.

Does this make sense?

Regards,

Jack