how to print the value of the string, not the string it self

Question

I have a possibly very easy question which I can't seem to figure out how. How to do something like this:

race = goblin  #I change the race here


goblingrowth = 200  
humangrowth = 300  
orgegrowth = 400

print (race + "growth")  #In this case, it will print the string "goblingrowth" in 
python, but I want it to print the value of the variable (goblingrowth), 
which is 200, and i have to do it this way.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks

Consider using a dict. – Chris Kitching Mar 09 '16 at 02:14 — Chris Kitching, Mar 09 '16 at 02:14

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 09 '16 at 02:16

3

You could just store the values in a dictionary instead of as separate variables.

growths = {'goblin': 200, 'humans': 300, 'ogre': 400}
print growths[race]

answered Mar 09 '16 at 02:16

Brendan Abel

35,343
14
88
118

Thanks a lot for all the answers, i just started python and is weeb level, those techniques will come in handy! – pythonsohard Mar 15 '16 at 09:04

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 09 '16 at 02:10

A better way to do this is to have a class to represent your different types of living entities. You can then create an instance for each race, setting the properties. You will then have convenient access to all of the properties of a given living. For example:

class Living(object):
    def __init__(self, name, growth):
        self.name = name
        self.growth = growth

goblin = Living("goblin", 200)
human  = Living("human", 300)
ogre   = Living("ogre", 400)

for living in (goblin, human, ogre):
    print(living.name + " growth is " + str(living.growth))

This outputs:

goblin growth is 200
human growth is 300
ogre growth is 400

idjaw · Answer 3 · 2016-03-09T02:08:00.703

Simply add in goblingrowth to your print as I will show below. However, the way you are looking to do this, you will have to cast your variable to a string (since your goblingrowth is an int), which isn't very ideal. You can do this:

print(race + " growth " + str(goblingrowth))

However, it would be more proper and strongly recommended to structure your output like this instead using string formatting:

print("{0} growth: {1}".format(race, goblingrowth))

What happened above, is that you are setting the arguments in to each of those positions in the string, so {0} indicates the first argument you are providing to format and set at that position of the string, which is race, then {1} will indicate the second argument provided to format, which is goblingrowth. You actually don't need to provide those numbers but I suggest you read the documentation provided below to get more acquainted.

Read about string formatting here. It will help greatly.

Mark Skelton · Answer 4 · 2016-03-09T02:14:50.083

-1

One way you could do this is to access the locals() dictionary which holds the local variables of your code and get the value of the variable from the string that you have. For example:

race = 'goblin'  #I change the race here

goblingrowth = 200  
humangrowth = 300  
orgegrowth = 400

print(locals()[race + 'growth'])  # this accesses the variable goblingrowth in the locals dictionary

Would output 200. Hope this helps!

edited Mar 09 '16 at 02:14

answered Mar 09 '16 at 02:01

Mark Skelton

3,663
4
27
47

1

I think someone downvoted you because using `eval` is really not a good idea. I would suggest re-working your solution. – idjaw Mar 09 '16 at 02:04
1

Read [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1832957/1832539) and [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/9384005/1832539) to start you off. It's not the best practice, and is pretty dangerous to use. – idjaw Mar 09 '16 at 02:07
You might consider using `ast.literal_eval()` – zondo Mar 09 '16 at 02:10

how to print the value of the string, not the string it self

4 Answers4