Question

I am trying to get input from a user into a variable but instead of a string, float or integer I want it to assign a different variable which is already defined. Pseudo-ish example:

xy = 23
a = raw_input("Enter a variable") xy
print (a)
23

Yes, this could be controlled with an if variable but for many variables this is not very practical I believe? I have no problem typing it just wondering wouldn’t it be bad practice?

Answer 1

Are you looking for something like this?

xy = 23
a = eval(raw_input("Enter a variable"))
print (a)

The task of adding a check in case the user enters an unkown variable is left to the reader…

Also beware of the potential security problems of this approach. A more secure way would be to restrict the evaluation scope by defining specific dicts that eval should be using. Read more in help(eval).