[<H.de.Wit@SFK.NL>]

I write the following code repeatedly:

if request.has_key('v1'): v1=request.v1 else: v1=-1

if request.has_key('v2'): v2=request.v2 else: v2=-1

etc.

Is there a way to do this more efficient and clean, something like this:

for reqvar in ['v1','v2','v3']: if request.haskey(reqvar): reqvar=request.reqvar #this doesn't work else reqvar=-1 # and this also

not.

This doesn't work because in the assignments like "reqvar=-1", the left side is not a variable reference but a string. There are several way you could proceed. You could write this: v1=-1;v2=-1;v3=-1 # assign your default values here vars={'v1':v1,'v2':v2,'v3':v3} for reqvar in vars.keys(): if request.has_key(reqvar): vars[reqvar]=request[reqvar] An alternative syntax if the default is the same for all the vx's is: v1=-1;v2=-1;v3=-1 # assign your default values here vars={'v1':v1,'v2':v2,'v3':v3} for reqvar in vars.keys(): vars[reqvar]=request.get(reqvar,-1) # Returns default if key is missing I've not tried get() on a REQUEST but assume it would work (it works for normal Python dictionaries). Otherwise you could use eval() or lambda functions, but I think this way is easier. Cheers, Tom P