How to print a dictionary's name?

Question

daisy = {
    'type' : 'dog',
    'owner' : 'miranda',
    }

bella = {
    'type' : 'cat',
    'owner' : 'luke',
    }

charlie = {
    'type' : 'lizard',
    'owner' : 'mike',
}

pets = [daisy, bella, ruby]

How to print out only the names of the dictionaries i.e. daisy, bella, charlie from a list?

Does this answer your question? [How can you print a variable name in python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/592746/how-can-you-print-a-variable-name-in-python) — Simon Fromme, Oct 25 '20 at 05:09
You should probably create a `pets` dictionary with the pet names as keys — Mike67, Oct 25 '20 at 05:12
Use a nested dictionary instead of individual variables. Then you just do `your_dict.keys()`. — Klaus D., Oct 25 '20 at 05:13
Printing variable names at runtime is (almost) never what you want... — Simon Fromme, Oct 25 '20 at 05:15

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '20 at 05:24

This is really an xy problem. You should never need to print the names of variables. The reason is that the data structures often get passed around in ways that the names of the variable get lost. This is what happens when you do:

pets = [daisy, bella, ruby]

Here pets is just a list of dictionaries...they are no longer named.

If the name is significant, then it should be part of the data. For example:

daisy = {
    'name': 'Daisy',
    'type': 'dog',
    'owner': 'miranda',
    }

bella = {
    'name': 'Bella',
    'type': 'cat',
    'owner': 'luke',
    }

charlie = {
    'name': 'Charlie',
    'type': 'lizard',
    'owner': 'mike',
}

pets = [daisy, bella, charlie]

for pet in pets:
    print(pet['name'])

Prints:

Daisy
Bella
Charlie

In fact, you can get rid of the named variable altogether now:

pets = [
    {
        'name': 'Daisy',
        'type': 'dog',
        'owner': 'miranda',
    },
    {
        'name': 'Bella',
        'type': 'cat',
        'owner': 'luke',
    },
    {
        'name': 'Charlie',
        'type': 'lizard',
        'owner': 'mike',
    }
]

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 25 '20 at 05:15

You can do it like this:

daisy = {
    'type' : 'dog',
    'owner' : 'miranda',
    }

bella = {
    'type' : 'cat',
    'owner' : 'luke',
    }

ruby = {
    'type' : 'lizard',
    'owner' : 'mike',
}

pets = [daisy, bella, ruby]

for i, e in list(globals().items()):
    if e in pets:
        print(i)

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 25 '20 at 09:50

0

daisy = {
    'name': 'Daisy',
    'type': 'dog',
    'owner': 'miranda',
    }

bella = {
    'name': 'Bella',
    'type': 'cat',
    'owner': 'luke',
    }

charlie = {
    'name': 'Charlie',
    'type': 'lizard',
    'owner': 'mike',
}

pets = [daisy, bella, charlie]

for i in pets:
    name = i["name"]
    print(name)

edited Oct 25 '20 at 09:50

Osadhi Virochana

1,294
2
11
21

answered Oct 25 '20 at 05:35

Aakash Thapa

74
1
7

How to print a dictionary's name?

3 Answers3