Python variable variables in "main"

Question

I want to automatically define variables using a dynamic string, similar to ${$a} in PHP.

As I do this in a plain script I do not have objects and therefore can not apply setattr or am I wrong?

How do I dynamically define variables?

Answer 1

You can store the variables you want in a dictionary. That's basically what php does, only in Python you can specify which dictionary to use and how to handle it.

Answer 2

You can modify local or global dictionary:

>>> locals()['xxx'] = 'Hi'
>>> xxx
'Hi'
>>> globals()['yyy'] = 'Hello'
>>> yyy
'Hello'