Question

I have a template file cotaining $DATE and $TIME to be substituted by the current values.
This works fine as long as I have evruthing in the main program.
However I want to put the substitution bit into a subroutine e.g. lie this:

def substitute():
  DATE = '20120209'
  TIME = '1200'
  f = open( 'template.txt' )
  template = string.Template( ''.join(f.readlines()) )
  f.close()

  # substitute and save

  f = open( 'current.txt', 'w+' )
  f.writelines(template.safe_substitute( globals() ))
  f.close()

As I said, this works fine if I have it in the main program. But in the def version it only works if DATE and TIME are already defined in the main program. Which I do dont want to do.

Any ideas what the problem could be?

Answer 1

Use locals() instead of globals() so the local values for DATE and TIME are substituted:

  f.writelines(template.safe_substitute( locals() ))

---

PS.

''.join(f.readlines())

is functionally equivalent to

f.read()

but slower since it splits the file into lines, then rejoins them. You might as well use f.read().