Get a dict of all variables currently in scope and their values

Question

Consider this snippet:

globalVar = 25

def myfunc(paramVar):
    localVar = 30
    print \"Vars: {globalVar}, {paramVar}, {localVar}!\".format(**VARS_IN_SCOP         


        

Answer 1

Does this do what you intended?

d = dict(globals())
d.update(locals())

If I read the documentation correctly, you create a copy of the globals() dict, then you overwrite any duplicates and insert new entries from the locals() dict (since the locals() should have preference within your scope, anyway).

---

I haven't had any luck in getting a proper function to return the full dictionary of variables in scope of the calling function. Here's the code (I only used pprint to format the output nicely for SO):

from pprint import *

def allvars_bad():
    fake_temp_var = 1
    d = dict(globals())
    d.update(locals())
    return d

def foo_bad():
    x = 5
    return allvars_bad()

def foo_good():
    x = 5
    fake_temp_var = "good"
    d = dict(globals())
    d.update(locals())
    return d

pprint (foo_bad(), width=50)
pprint (foo_good(), width=50)

and the output:

 {'PrettyPrinter': ,
 '__builtins__': ,
 '__doc__': None,
 '__file__': 'temp.py',
 '__name__': '__main__',
 '__package__': None,
 'allvars_bad': ,
 'd': ,
 'fake_temp_var': 1,
 'foo_bad': ,
 'foo_good': ,
 'isreadable': ,
 'isrecursive': ,
 'pformat': ,
 'pprint': ,
 'saferepr': }
{'PrettyPrinter': ,
 '__builtins__': ,
 '__doc__': None,
 '__file__': 'temp.py',
 '__name__': '__main__',
 '__package__': None,
 'allvars_bad': ,
 'd': ,
 'fake_temp_var': 'good',
 'foo_bad': ,
 'foo_good': ,
 'isreadable': ,
 'isrecursive': ,
 'pformat': ,
 'pprint': ,
 'saferepr': ,
 'x': 5}

Note that in the second output, we have overwritten fake_temp_var, and x is present; the first output only included the local vars within the scope of allvars_bad.

So if you want to access the full variable scope, you cannot put locals() inside another function.

---

I had suspected there was some sort of frame object, I just didn't (know where to) look for it.

This works to your spec, I believe:

def allvars_good(offset=0):
    frame = sys._getframe(1+offset)
    d = frame.f_globals
    d.update(frame.f_locals)
    return d


def foo_good2():
    a = 1
    b = 2
    return allvars_good()

-->

{'PrettyPrinter': ,
 '__builtins__': ,
 '__doc__': None,
 '__file__': 'temp.py',
 '__name__': '__main__',
 '__package__': None,
 'a': 1,
 'allvars_bad': ,
 'allvars_good': ,
 'b': 2,
 'foo_bad': ,
 'foo_good': ,
 'foo_good2': ,
 'isreadable': ,
 'isrecursive': ,
 'pformat': ,
 'pprint': ,
 'saferepr': ,
 'sys': }