Help with dynamic attributes.

[Mr.Rech]

Hi all,
I was writing a simple class when I get a strange error message that I
can't
understand. Hopefully someone could help me here.

My class's init method takes a list of lists as input argument and I'd
like to create
several attributes each one referencing one item of the passed list.
Easy-of-use arguments
has led me to call these attributes as x0, x1, x2 and so on. In order
to get as many
attributes as the number of items of the passed list dynamically
defined I wrote the
following code:

class foo(object):
def __init__(self, list_of_lists):
self.lol = list(list_of_lists)

for i in range(len(list_of_lists)):
exec 'self.x%d = self.lol[%d]' % (i, i)

self.shape = tuple(len(item) for item in self.lol)

As soon as I try to import the module in which this class is defined I
get the following
error message:

SyntaxError: unqualified exec is not allowed in function '__init__' it
contains a nested
function with free variables (module_name.py, line 49)

After a little bit of trials and errors I found that if I comment out
the line

self.shape = tuple(len(item) for item in self.lol)

or I rewrote the for cycle as follows:

for i in range(len(list_of_lists)):
exec 'self.x%d = self.lol[%d]' % (i, i) in locals()

the error disappears and the code works as expected. What it is even
more strange to me is
that if I replace the generator expression statement (that defines
self.shape) with an
explicit for-loop the error message doesn't come in and the code works
flawlessly.

I really can't understand why it happens and I'm wondering what it's
going on here behind
the scene. Any explanation? Any better way to get the same attributes I
got with the exec
statement?

Thanks in advance,
Andrea

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

class foo(object):
def __init__(self, list_of_lists):
self.lol = list(list_of_lists)

for i in range(len(list_of_lists)):
exec 'self.x%d = self.lol[%d]' % (i, i)

self.shape = tuple(len(item) for item in self.lol)

generator expressions are anonymous functions, and the "self" in that line
is a free variable (that is, it belongs to an outer scope). Python uses static
analysis to identify free variables, and that doesn't mix well with exec.

Any better way to get the same attributes I got with the exec statement?

use setattr(self, name, value)

</F>

 

[Mr.Rech]

I would have sworn that it had been a better way to get it.

Thanks a lot,
Andrea

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Mr.Rech a écrit :
(snip)

My class's init method takes a list of lists as input argument and I'd
like to create
several attributes each one referencing one item of the passed list.
>
Easy-of-use arguments
has led me to call these attributes as x0, x1, x2 and so on.

This is a very wrong design IM(ns)HO. A 'has-many' semantic is better
expressed by a multivalued attribute (ie : list, tuple or dict) than by
an undefined number of monovalued attributes. Also, the way you're
trying to implement it, you will loose sync between individual
monovalued attributes and the list of lists.

My 2 cents

 

[Mike Meyer]

Hi all,
I was writing a simple class when I get a strange error message that I
can't
understand. Hopefully someone could help me here.

My class's init method takes a list of lists as input argument and I'd
like to create
several attributes each one referencing one item of the passed list.

Why? You save all of two characters per reference over doing a simple

self.x = list(self.lol)

<mike