[Zope] evaluating a string as an expression

[Greg Conway]

Hi all,

I'm managing (very slowly!) to ease myself from DTML to Python, but I have
just hit a bit of a snag...

I have a string of variables, such as value1, value2, value3, etc.

I wish to find the values of these variables as expressions within python,
if that makes sense!

What I've done is stored these values within a form using a loop, and now I
need to retreive the values in python. I can see them in the request, and
can access them via REQUEST.specify1, REQUEST.specify2, etc - but not
programmatically!

After many hours of working through this, I find (I think!) I need the
python 'eval' command.

And then I find it's not allowed in Zope!!

So my question is (please somebody take pity on me!!), how can I perform the
following (pseudo code!!) in python?

TestVar = ( 'REQUEST.specify' + str(OutsideLoop.CatID) )

This doesn't work, obviously! What I really want to do is (I think)...

TestVar = eval("REQUEST.specify" + str(OutsideLoop.CatID))

Please, please, please can anybody offer any help on this?

Regards,

Greg Conway.

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