How to find the name of the current function?

Question

I know it seems lame, but I'd like to have a function get access to its own name for printing error or debugging messages. It would be easy then to have a standard way to start the printout:

print(__myname__,"is reporting the following..."

I prefer this to having to explicitly type the name each time because I often want to cut and paste such things, and I'd like any name change to be automatic, and thus more robustly correct.

This is similar to another question but I want the name of the current function, not the name of its caller.

I note that the special name

__name__

in this spot is reporting the name of the package, not the name of the function.

@mypetlion this does not look like a proper duplicate, because the OP wants to find the name of the currently executed function without referring to it explicitly. — bereal, Sep 24 '18 at 22:23
Possible duplicate of [How to get the caller's method name in the called method?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2654113/how-to-get-the-callers-method-name-in-the-called-method) — codeforester, Sep 24 '18 at 22:31

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 24 '18 at 22:31

4

You can use traceback module to extract stack information:

import traceback

def current_function_name():
    return traceback.extract_stack()[-2][2]    

def foo():
    print current_function_name()

>>> foo()
foo

answered Sep 24 '18 at 22:31

zch

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It's going to be way more expensive than a string literal, though. – user2357112 Sep 24 '18 at 23:49
Since it's for debugging, I don't much care. – 4dummies Sep 25 '18 at 01:16

How to find the name of the current function?

1 Answers1