Can an object inspect the name of the variable it's been assigned to?

Question

In Python, is there a way for an instance of an object to see the variable name it\'s assigned to? Take the following for example:

class MyObject(object):
           


        

Answer 1

Here is a simple function to achieve what you want, assuming you wish to retrieve the name of the variable where the instance is assigned from a method call :

import inspect

def get_instance_var_name(method_frame, instance):
    parent_frame = method_frame.f_back
    matches = {k: v for k,v in parent_frame.f_globals.items() if v is instance}
    assert len(matches) < 2
return list(matches.keys())[0] if matches else None

Here is an usage example :

class Bar:
    def foo(self):
        print(get_instance_var_name(inspect.currentframe(), self))

bar = Bar()
bar.foo()  # prints 'bar'

def nested():
    bar.foo()
nested()  # prints 'bar'

Bar().foo()  # prints None