[Tutor] creating an object instance w/out hard-coding the name

[Magnus Lycka]

At 16:08 2002-10-17 -0400, dlphone@bellsouth.net wrote:
>Hello all:
>
>I would like to create a new object instance from user input, or using an 
>iterated variable, for a small OODB. Can this be done? Assuming that 
>'Project' is my class, then Creating an instance as follows won't work, 
>because the new instance will literally be named 'projName'.
>
>projName = raw_input("Name your project")
>projName = Project()

You *can* do this, but you shouldn't. It would only cause
sorrows. The only one to introduce variable names in the
program should be the programmer. I think you would have
figured that out in time. It would have been extremely hard
to get the rest of the program to work. But go on coding, I
think the use of variable names will become clearer.

I suggest you place the projects in a dictionary.

projects = {}
...
projName = raw_input("Name your project: ")
if projects.has_key(projName):
     print "That name is already taken."
     ...
else:
     projects[projName] = Project()
     ...


-- 
Magnus Lycka, Thinkware AB
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phone: int+46 70 582 80 65, fax: int+46 70 612 80 65
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