Use strings in a list as variable names in Python

Question

I have a list of string elements like user_contract = ['ZNZ6','TNZ6','ZBZ6']

I have a data set which has nested list structure like data = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]]

I want to assign each of the user_contract strings as variable names for each of the data nested list, in the respective order.

I know I can do this manually by typing ZNZ6, TNZ6, ZBZ6 = data. I don't think this is flexible enough, and I would have to manually change this line every time I change the names in user_contract.

Is there a way where I can make use of the user_contract variable to assign data to each of its elements?

Use a dictionary for this: docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries — idjaw
– idjaw, Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 1:54
Does this answer your question? How do I create a variable number of variables? — wjandrea
– wjandrea, Commented Jul 2, 2020 at 0:22

Nikolay Fominyh · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-22 15:13:24Z

7

This code can help you:

user_contract = ['ZNZ6','TNZ6','ZBZ6']
data = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]]
dictionary = dict(zip(user_contract, data))
print(dictionary)

It creates a dictionary from the two lists and prints it:

python3 pyprog.py 
{'ZBZ6': [7, 8, 9], 'ZNZ6': [1, 2, 3], 'TNZ6': [4, 5, 6]}

edited Mar 22, 2017 at 15:13

Nikolay Fominyh

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answered Sep 15, 2016 at 1:59

Niklas Rosencrantz

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1 Comment

J.Massey Over a year ago

This is a really neat trick, I was just wondering how the efficiency of this compared with a pandas DataFrame?

coder.in.me · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-15 03:39:17Z

3

You can use exec to evaluate expressions and assign to variables dynamically:

>>> names = ','.join(user_contract)
>>> exec('{:s} = {:s}'.format(names, str(data)))

answered Sep 15, 2016 at 3:39

coder.in.me

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Comments

René · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-15 15:11:02Z

0

You can use a dictionary comprehension to assign the values:

myvars = {user_contract[i]: data[i] for i in range(len(user_contract))}

Then you can access the values like so

myvars['TNZ6']
> [1, 2, 3]

edited Dec 15, 2017 at 15:11

René

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answered Sep 15, 2016 at 1:59

twinlakes

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