Turn the dictionary keys into variable names with same values in Python from .mat Matlab files using scipy.io.loadmat

Question

I am trying to take a basic dictionary temp = {'key':array([1,2])} loaded from a .mat file with scipy.io.loadmat. Turn the keys in the Python dictionary file returned by loadmat() into variable names with values the same as the representing keys.

So for example:

temp = {'key':array([1,2])}

turned into

key = array([1,2])

I know how to grab the keys with temp.keys(). Then grabbing the items is easy but how do I force the list of strings in temp.keys() to be variable names instead of strings.

I hope this makes sense but this is probably really easy I just can't think how to do it.

Cheers

Answer 1

In python, method parameters can be passed as dictionnaries with the ** magic:

def my_func(key=None):
   print key
   #do the real stuff

temp = {'key':array([1,2])}

my_func(**temp)

>>> array([1,2])

Answer 2

The best thing to do is to use temp['key']. To answer the question, however, you could use the exec function. The benefits of doing it this way is that you can do this don't have to hard code any variable names or confine yourself to work inside a function.

from numpy import array,matrix

temp = {'key':array([1,2]),'b': 4.3,'c': 'foo','d':matrix([2,2])}

for k in temp:
    exec('{KEY} = {VALUE}'.format(KEY = k, VALUE = repr(temp[k])))

>>> key
array([1, 2])
>>> b
4.3
>>> c
'foo'
>>> d
matrix([[2, 2]])

NOTE : This will only work if you have imported the specific function from the modules. If you don't want to do this because of code practice or the sheer volume of function that you would need to import, you could write a function to concatenate the module name in front of the entry. Output is the same as the previous example.

import numpy as np,numpy

temp = {'key':np.array([1,2]),'b': 4.3,'c': 'foo','d':np.matrix([2,2])}

def exec_str(key,mydict):
    s = str(type(mydict[key]))
    if '.' in s:
        start = s.index("'") + 1
        end = s.index(".") + 1
        v = s[start:end:] + repr(mydict[key])
    else:
        v = repr(mydict[key])     
    return v

for k in temp:
    exec('{KEY} = {VALUE}'.format(KEY = k, VALUE = exec_str(k,temp)))

While this isn't the best code practice, It works well for all of the examples I tested.