Dynamically creating a variable

Question

I have tried at learnpython.org to create a variable dynamically it can be create as below :

food = 'bread'
vars()[food] = 'asdasd'
print (bread)

It will print out "asdasd". However when I tried with my python3, it gives me an error (NameError: name 'bread' is not defined). How can I do that using python3?

• willeM_ Van Onsem: This can be done, but it is a terrible anti-pattern. If you have to do this, usually something is very wrong with the design.
• internet_user: I cannot reproduce this. It works fine for me.
• Chris: @StefanPochmann I think the OP is saying that he was using the websites built-in Python IDE to run his code.

Answer 1

In python we tend to avoid this kind of dynamic variables, but anyway your answer is:

a = 'test'
globals()[a] = 123
print(test)

Better approach is by using a dictionnary.

a = 'test'
myVar = {}
myVar[a] = 123
print(myVar['test'])

• Django newbie: currently, my issue is I need to read a csv file and based on the user selected columns, I need to create a var to store it. if i ignore this kind of dynamic variables, is there any other way to do it?
• scholi: The way to do it is to store it in a dictionnary or a list and access it via a key.
• Django newbie: It doesn't work. what I need is i have a variable temp1, storing a value, temp1 = "country" i wanted to used that country as a variable for another variable, for example: country = "UK"
• juanpa.arrivillaga: @Djangonewbie just use a dict