Question

Possible Duplicate:
Python: Get object by id

Typically when you see the string representation of an instance it looks something like <module.space.Class @ 0x108181bc>. I am curious if it’s possible to take this string and get a handle on the instance.

Something like

 obj_instance = get_instance_form_repr("<module.space.Class @ 0x1aa031b>")

I don’t believe it could be possible but if it is, it would be really useful.

Answer 1

You can do it for the subset that is tracked by the garbage collector at least, in a nasty and unreliable way.

def lookup_object_by_repr(myrep)
    import gc
    for obj in gc.get_objects():
        if repr(obj) == myrep:
           return obj

You can do even more things if you write a simple C extension and inspect the memory address.