Python: Print a variable's name and value?

Question

When debugging, we often see print statements like these:

print x        # easy to type, but no context
print \'x=\',x   # more context, harder to type
12
x=         


        

Answer 1

A simple example would be:

def debugPrint(*expr):
    text = traceback.extract_stack()[-2][3]
    begin = text.find('debugPrint(') + len('debugPrint(')
    end = text.find(')',begin)
    text=[name.strip() for name in text[begin:end].split(',')]
    for t, e in text, expr:
        print(str(t) +  " = " + str(e))

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

I wrote the following to be able to type something like (at line 41 of file describe.py):

describe('foo' + 'bar')
describe(numpy.zeros((2, 4)))

and see:

describe.py@41 describe('foo' + 'bar') = str(foobar) [len=6]   
describe.py@42 describe(numpy.zeros((2, 4))) = ndarray(array([[0., 0., 0., 0.],
   [0., 0., 0., 0.]])) [shape=(2, 4)]

Here's how:

# Print the line and filename, function call, the class, str representation and some other info

# Inspired by https://stackoverflow.com/a/8856387/5353461
import inspect
import re


def describe(arg):
    frame = inspect.currentframe()
    callerframeinfo = inspect.getframeinfo(frame.f_back)
    try:
        context = inspect.getframeinfo(frame.f_back).code_context
        caller_lines = ''.join([line.strip() for line in context])
        m = re.search(r'describe\s*\((.+?)\)$', caller_lines)
        if m:
            caller_lines = m.group(1)
            position = str(callerframeinfo.filename) + "@" + str(callerframeinfo.lineno)

            # Add additional info such as array shape or string length
            additional = ''
            if hasattr(arg, "shape"):
                additional += "[shape={}]".format(arg.shape)
            elif hasattr(arg, "__len__"):  # shape includes length information
                additional += "[len={}]".format(len(arg))

            # Use str() representation if it is printable
            str_arg = str(arg)
            str_arg = str_arg if str_arg.isprintable() else repr(arg)

            print(position, "describe(" + caller_lines + ") = ", end='')
            print(arg.__class__.__name__ + "(" + str_arg + ")", additional)
        else:
            print("Describe: couldn't find caller context")

    finally:
        del frame
        del callerframeinfo

https://gist.github.com/HaleTom/125f0c0b0a1fb4fbf4311e6aa763844b

Answer 3

Multiple variables (taking @Blender response one step further) :

def debug(variables, sep =''):
        vars = variables.split(',')
        for var in vars:
          print(var, '=', repr(eval(var)), end = sep)

Example:

import bumpy as np
gPrimeLinear = lambda z: np.ones(np.array(z).size)*z
gPrimeSigmoid = lambda z: 1./(1+np.exp(-z))*(1-1./(1+np.exp(-z)))
gPrimeTanh = lambda z: 1- np.tanh(z)**2
z = np.array([ 0.2, 0.4, 0.1])
debug("z, gPrimeLinear(z), gPrimeSigmoid(z), gPrimeTanh(z)", '\n')

This returns:

> z = array([0.2, 0.4, 0.1])  
> gPrimeLinear(z) = array([0.2, 0.4, 0.1]) 
> gPrimeSigmoid(z) = array([0.24751657, 0.24026075, 0.24937604]) 
> gPrimeTanh(z) = array([0.96104298, 0.85563879, 0.99006629])