How to get and create custom variables from a text file in Python3?

Question

So, I'm making a program (hopefully) that is an 'improved' command prompt.
In my program, I want it to get all lines from a text file.
The text file will contain lines that look like this:

desktop=C:\Users\%username%\Desktop
scripts=D:\Scripts

What I want my program to do, is to read through that, and create new variables such as:

desktop = "C:\Users\%username%\Desktop"
scripts = "D:\Scripts"

I know there are probably better and safer ways to do this, but for now, I'd like to do it this way. Here is my code so far (it doesn't work):

with open("custom_shortcuts.txt","r") as f:
    customShortcuts = [x.strip('\n') for x in f.readlines()]
for i in customShortcuts:
    parts = i.split("=")
    varName = str(parts[0])
    varValue = str(parts[1])
    eval("varName = varValue")

As you can see, I tried to use eval(), and failed.

cs95 · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-04 10:17:33Z

5

Can you work with dictionaries instead?

text = r'''desktop=C:\Users\%username%\Desktop
scripts=D:\Scripts'''

var = dict(line.strip().split('=') for line in text.splitlines())
print(var)
{'desktop': 'C:\\Users\\%username%\\Desktop', 'scripts': 'D:\\Scripts'}

It isn't good practice to dynamically inject variables into your namespace. If you want the value for desktop, you'd access it as var['desktop'].

edited Mar 4, 2018 at 10:17

answered Mar 4, 2018 at 7:56

cs95

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1 Comment

Marcus Weinberger Over a year ago

This seems like a better idea, thanks. I'll try it out!

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