Question

I need to create an unknown number of python variables, based on a list of file in a folder.

I found that I could use the global dictionary to create and initialize those variables:

# libraries import
import os.path
import glob
import numpy as np

# list of all the text files in the folder
list = glob.glob("*.txt")

# creation of the variables based on the name of each file
for file in list:
    shortname = os.path.splitext(file)[0]
    globals()[shortname] = np.loadtxt(file) 

However, I was wondering if it was a good practice to access the global dictionary for variable assignment in python (when we do not know the number and name of the variables in advance) or if there was an alternative method preferable.

Answer 1

You should use a dedicated dictionary for this:

files = {f: np.loadtxt(f) for f in glob.glob("*.txt")}

Generally, you should not mix data and variable or attribute names. Your code could shadow just any Python built-in if a file with the same name exists.