Importing Variables From A Namespace Object In Python

Say I have a namespace args that I obtain from calling parser.parse_args(), which parses the command line arguments. How can I import all variables from this namespace to my curren

Solution 1:

Update your local namespace with the result of the vars() function:

globals().update(vars(args))

This is generally not that great an idea; leave those attributes in the namespace instead.

You could create more problems than you solved with this approach, especially if you accidentally configure arguments with a dest name that shadows a built-in or local you care about, such as list or print or something. Have fun hunting down that bug!

Tim Peters already stated this in his Zen of Python:

Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Solution 2:

Probably the worst idea ever: since you can pass an arbitrary object to parse_args(), pass the __builtins__ module, so that all attributes can be looked up as local variables.

p = argparse.ArgumentParser()
p.add_argument("--foo")
p.parse_args( "--foo bar".split(), __builtins__)
print foo

This will even "work" for parameters whose destinations aren't valid Python identifiers:

# To use the example given by Francis Avila in his comment on Martijn Pieters' answergetattr(__builtins__, '2my-param')