Is there a way in Python to take a string and find the list it is associated with?

Question

l1 = ["a","b","c"]
l2 = ["d","e","f"]

var1 = input("What list do you want to use? (l1 or l2)" 

print (var1)
output: l1 

how do I make it so if the user types in l1 the output will be: ["a","b","c"] ?

The closest example I have found is:

x='buffalo'    
exec("%s = %d" % (x,2))

Answer 1

A dictionary would be a great solution here.

mapping = {
    "l1": ["a","b","c"],
    "l2": ["d","e","f"]
}

var1 = input("What list do you want to use? (l1 or l2)")

mapping[var1]  # this is the list.

If var1 is not a key in the dictionary, though, the above code will raise a KeyError. You can check for this and print a useful error message with a try-except block.

try:
    my_list = mapping[var1]
except KeyError:
    print("unknown input: {}".format(var1))

Answer 2

if var1 == 'I1':
  print(I1)
elif var1 == 'I2':
  print(I2)

That's just a basic if/else.

Answer 3

You might want to look at eval

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#eval

Sample code:

l1 = ["a","b","c"]
l2 = ["d","e","f"]

var1 = input("What list do you want to use? (l1 or l2)")

print (var1)

eval("print(" + var1 + ")")

Output:

What list do you want to use? (l1 or l2)l1
l1
['a', 'b', 'c']