Python: how to refer to an instance name?

Question

I\'m collecting instances using the following code:

class Hand():
    instances = []
    def __init__(self):
        Hand.instances.append(self)
        self         


        

Answer 1

I don't know if this would solve your problem or not. I needed to get instance names in order to do clear error reporting. Everywhere I looked, folks said "variables don't have names! The name is just a pointer to the thing!"

But it turns out that getting instance names in python is pretty straightforward. Here's how I did it:

import gc
def instance_names(self):
    referrers = gc.get_referrers(self)
    result = []
    dict_of_things = {}
    for item in referrers:
        if isinstance(item, dict):
            dict_of_things = item
    for k, v in dict_of_things.items():
        if v == self:
            result.append(k)
    if not result:
        result = ['unnamed instance']
    return result