python - Printing the name of a variable

Question

I am a programmer new to python trying to write a simple test1() function that uses arg (or *arg) to print out how it was called using the "name" of the argument passed to it, not the content of the list or any other variable that I am passing.

The following example:

def test1(arg):

    print "name of arg is %r" % arg


alphabet = ['a', 'b', 'c']

test1(alphabet) # prints name of arg is ['a', 'b', 'c']

I want it to print out: name of arg is alphabet I researched and tried several things related to using *argv but did not succeed. Can someone shed some light on this? I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Thanks!

Answer 1

This is more than a little ugly, but it's one way to achieve what you're after:

import traceback
import re

alphabet = ['a', 'b', 'c']

def test(arg):
    stack = traceback.extract_stack()
    arg_name = re.sub('test((.*))', 'g<1>', stack[-2][-1])
    print arg_name

test(alphabet)
test('foo')

The result of which is

alphabet
'foo'