I have 8 lists that have a bunch of data in them named erik1,erik2,...,erik8. The code I have is:
while (y<9):#go through all the arrays
y=y+1
array="erik"+str(y)
print (array)
for z in array:
In the for loop, I want array to correspond to the string that is generated in the while loop above it. Right now it thinks of array as a string rather than the list object I want. How can i make this work?
Variable names are code, not data. Use a list of lists instead.
eriks = [erik1, erik2, erik3, erik4, erik5, erik6, erik7, erik8]
for erik in eriks:
for z in erik:
....
Taking a step back, whatever is creating the 8 similarly named lists should be creating a single list of lists (or a dictionary of lists) in the first place.
@chepner's answer is the correct way to go; you really should make the erik* lists a list of list. It's much more flexible that way.
However, if you can't do that for some reason (e.g. legacy code that would break if you do that), then the answer is using globals() and locals(). These two functions return dictionaries that allow you to query for objects (variables, functions, etc.) by their names.
http://www.diveintopython.net/html_processing/locals_and_globals.html
Assuming that your erik* lists are local variables (if they are global variables, use globals() instead), you can access them as followed:
for i in range(1, 9):
array = locals()["erik"+str(i)]
print array
So erik1, erik2 ... are lists referenced by the string you create in the while loop?
In this case, just use eval("erik"+str(y)) to get the list referenced by that string
[z <<DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH z HERE>> for z in [array for array in [eval("erik"+str(y)) for y in range(9)]]]
or
for array in [eval("erik"+str(y)) for y in range(9)]:
for z in array:
# DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH z
array = ["erik{}".format(i) for i in range(1,9)]
print array
