python function call with variable

Question

def test():
 print 'test'
def test2():
 print 'test2'
test = {'test':'blabla','test2':'blabla2'}
for key, val in test.items():
 key() # Here i want to call the function with the key name, how can i do so?

• cfi: possible duplicate of Calling a function of a module from a string with the function's name in Python

Answer 1

You could use the actual function objects themselves as keys, rather than the names of the functions. Functions are first class objects in Python, so it's cleaner and more elegant to use them directly rather than their names.

test = {test:'blabla', test2:'blabla2'}
for key, val in test.items():
 key()

Answer 2

John has a good solution. Here's another way, using eval():

def test():
 print 'test'
def test2():
 print 'test2'
mydict = {'test':'blabla','test2':'blabla2'}
for key, val in mydict.items():
 eval(key+'()')

Note that I changed the name of the dictionary to prevent a clash with the name of the test() function.

• Daniel DiPaolo: Oof, not sure why you'd ever use this over the "function objects as keys themselves" method. If anything, you may be introspecting using something like hasattr, but never ever eval
• chrisaycock: @Daniel I didn't say it was pretty! :D
• martineau: This works, but eval() has a lot of overhead to use it just calling a function. There's other better, way more "Pythonic" ways...
• Karl Knechtel: ... like, for example, looking up the name in globals() and/or locals() perhaps? :)

Answer 3

def test():
 print 'test'
def test2():
 print 'test2'
assign_list=[test,test2]
for i in assign_list:
 i()

• Surya: in assign_list test,test2 give to direct way i.e [test,test2]
• Surya: for i in assign_list: this next line i()

Answer 4

def test():
 print 'test'
def test2():
 print 'test2'
func_dict = {
 "test":test,
 "test2":test2
}
test = {'test':'blabla','test2':'blabla2'}
for key, val in test.items():
 func_dict[key]()