Python raw_input a variable name

Question

So I'm making a little game, where the current plan is for the user to input the name of a tile (eg. A1 or B7) then a sprite will move tot hat tile. I have made variables called A1 and B7 etc, and then given them values of (x,y) where x and y are their relative positions on the grid. I have used the raw_input command to get the user to input their tile name, but I want the value of that variable to be the name of the tiles variable.

So say the user inputs "C5" I want this to reference the variable "C5", which stores the coordinates of tile C5, then move the sprite to those coordinates. Is there any way of doing this?

Answer 1

Store your locations and their names in a dictionary like this:

>>> locations = {'A1': (1, 0),
                'B1': (2, 0),
                'C1': (3, 0),
                'A2': (1, 1),
                'B2': (2, 1)
                }

>>> destination = raw_input('Where would you like to move?: ')

Now when the user enters a location, like 'A2' we can access the coordinates by checking the dict:

>>> locations[destination]
(1, 1)

Then you can send this to whatever you're using to move the sprite ( move_sprite() ) as a guess / example:

>>> move_sprite(locations[destination])