Python: How to get argument's name runtime

Question

in Python: may be so obvious, :) anyway, we are looking for ?, below:

def printname(x):
   print ?,x

>>> a = 1.3
>>> printname(a)
>>> 'a',1.3

so something instead of ? to represent the name of passed argument.
if not that obvious ? any trick or solution?

as @gnibbler demonstrates, the exact solution your asking is approximately possible, but it's unlikely to be genuinely useful, and even more so, will probably be unreliable. What problem are you really trying to solve, maybe we can suggest an alternate approach to the one you're asking for. — SingleNegationElimination
– SingleNegationElimination, Commented May 24, 2013 at 12:44

Daniel Roseman · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-24 10:42:05Z

2

You can't possibly know this. Objects don't know their names. They can have many names, or none at all, if they're simply an item in another object or list.

answered May 24, 2013 at 10:42

Daniel Roseman

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1 Comment

Developer Over a year ago

As you see in the tiny link in the post blue(?) we noticed it may not be possible. However, we still are hopeful for some trick to make our function to work. Think this way. Any idea?

John La Rooy · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-24 11:05:48Z

1

It's not impossible. You need to traverse back up stack frames and find the line of code that calls the function.

It's an ok hack to do for debugging, but no way I would use it in real code

Here's a starting point for you:

import inspect
def printname(x):
    print inspect.stack()[1][4]

a = 1.3
printname(a)

edited May 24, 2013 at 11:05

answered May 24, 2013 at 10:59

John La Rooy

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1 Comment

Developer Over a year ago

Great! it prints: ['printname(a)\n'] which can be easily used not only for extraction of the name of the argument (a) but also the function's name.

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