What is the Python equivalent of static variables inside a function?

Question

What is the idiomatic Python equivalent of this C/C++ code?

void foo()
{
    static int counter = 0;
    counter++;
          


        

Answer 1

A static variable inside a Python method

class Count:
    def foo(self):
        try: 
            self.foo.__func__.counter += 1
        except AttributeError: 
            self.foo.__func__.counter = 1

        print self.foo.__func__.counter

m = Count()
m.foo()       # 1
m.foo()       # 2
m.foo()       # 3

Answer 2

A little bit more readable, but more verbose (Zen of Python: explicit is better than implicit):

>>> def func(_static={'counter': 0}):
...     _static['counter'] += 1
...     print _static['counter']
...
>>> func()
1
>>> func()
2
>>>

See here for an explanation of how this works.

Answer 3

_counter = 0
def foo():
   global _counter
   _counter += 1
   print 'counter is', _counter

Python customarily uses underscores to indicate private variables. The only reason in C to declare the static variable inside the function is to hide it outside the function, which is not really idiomatic Python.

Answer 4

Use a generator function to generate an iterator.

def foo_gen():
    n = 0
    while True:
        n+=1
        yield n

Then use it like

foo = foo_gen().next
for i in range(0,10):
    print foo()

If you want an upper limit:

def foo_gen(limit=100000):
    n = 0
    while n < limit:
       n+=1
       yield n

If the iterator terminates (like the example above), you can also loop over it directly, like

for i in foo_gen(20):
    print i

Of course, in these simple cases it's better to use xrange :)

Here is the documentation on the yield statement.

Answer 5

Using an attribute of a function as static variable has some potential drawbacks:

• Every time you want to access the variable, you have to write out the full name of the function.
• Outside code can access the variable easily and mess with the value.

Idiomatic python for the second issue would probably be naming the variable with a leading underscore to signal that it is not meant to be accessed, while keeping it accessible after the fact.

An alternative would be a pattern using lexical closures, which are supported with the nonlocal keyword in python 3.

def make_counter():
    i = 0
    def counter():
        nonlocal i
        i = i + 1
        return i
    return counter
counter = make_counter()

Sadly I know no way to encapsulate this solution into a decorator.

Answer 6

def staticvariables(**variables):
    def decorate(function):
        for variable in variables:
            setattr(function, variable, variables[variable])
        return function
    return decorate

@staticvariables(counter=0, bar=1)
def foo():
    print(foo.counter)
    print(foo.bar)

Much like vincent's code above, this would be used as a function decorator and static variables must be accessed with the function name as a prefix. The advantage of this code (although admittedly anyone might be smart enough to figure it out) is that you can have multiple static variables and initialise them in a more conventional manner.