Is there a way to use something like globals() or locals() to access a variable defined in a parent function by name (i.e., as a string)?
Both of these examples give KeyError: 'x':
def f():
x = 1
def g():
print(globals()['x'])
g()
def f():
x = 1
def g():
print(locals()['x'])
g()
Yes it's possible, but you are working against Python, don't do this:
In [1]: import inspect
In [2]: def f():
...: x = 1
...: def g():
...: print(inspect.currentframe().f_back.f_locals['x'])
...: g()
...:
In [3]: f()
1
Seriously, don't. Write good code, not bad code. For all of us.
I'm not really sure about it's usefullness, but you can do this by inspecting the stack frame of the enclosing function i.e. frame at depth 1 and getting x from the locals dict:
In [1]: import sys
In [2]: def f():
...: x = 1
...: def g():
...: print(sys._getframe(1).f_locals['x'])
...: g()
...:
In [3]: f()
1
Why not just pass the value to the child function like this:
def f():
x = 1
def g(parameter):
print(parameter)
g(x)
'x' as a string.
xis neither a global nor a local variable. You'd have to inspect the stack frame. Honestly, there is almost certainly no reason to do this. What are you actually trying to accomplish? IOW, you can probably accomplish this, but you probably don't really want to.xis not a local or a global variable in either of the two definitions, for the first def to work, x needs to be defined in a global scope, for the second def to work, x needs to be defined inside g