Python - reference object in memory by address

Question

This is kind of a silly question, but I'm just curious about it.

Suppose I'm at the Python shell and I have some database object that I query. I do:

db.query(queryString)

The query returns a response <QueryResult object at 0xffdf842c> or something like that.

But then I say "Oh! I forgot to put result = db.query(queryString) so that I can actually use the result of my query!"

Well isn't there some method that just lets me reference the object in memory?

Something like result = reference('<QueryResult object at 0xffdf842c>')?

the wolf · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-08 15:14:41Z

7

You can do:

>>> result=_

at the shell. _ represents the last calculated object.

Example:

>>> iter(range(10))
<listiterator object at 0x10ebcccd0>
>>> result=_
>>> result
<listiterator object at 0x10ebcccd0>
>>> list(result)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

You can also see the string representation of the object (if the object type supports that) by typing repr(_)

edited Jun 8, 2012 at 15:14

answered Jun 8, 2012 at 15:08

the wolf

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4 Comments

John Thompson Over a year ago

oh, _ is the most recently returned object?

the wolf Over a year ago

@John Peter Thompson Garcés: Yes

John Thompson Over a year ago

So, what if I want the result of some previous expression? I just read that in IPython you can do _2, _3, etc. But is there anything that can do this in the standard Python shell?

the wolf Over a year ago

@John Peter Thompson Garcés: I am pretty sure the default Python shell only stores a single object output (unlike iPython...)

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