What is the Python equivalent of static variables

Question

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

void foo()
{
    static int counter = 0;
    counter++;
    printf("counter is %d\n", counter);
}

specifically, how does one implement the static member at the function level, as opposed to the class level? And does placing the function into a class change anything?

Answer 1

You can add attributes to a function, and use it as a static variable.

def myfunc():
  myfunc.counter += 1
  print myfunc.counter

# attribute must be initialized
myfunc.counter = 0

Alternatively, if you don't want to setup the variable outside the function, you can use hasattr() to avoid an AttributeError exception:

def myfunc():
  if not hasattr(myfunc, "counter"):
     myfunc.counter = 0  # it doesn't exist yet, so initialize it
  myfunc.counter += 1

Anyway static variables are rather rare, and you should find a better place for this variable, most likely inside a class.

Answer 2

Building on Daniel's answer (additions):

class Foo(object): 
    counter = 0  

def __call__(self, inc_value=0):
    Foo.counter += inc_value
    return Foo.counter

foo = Foo()

def use_foo(x,y):
    if(x==5):
        foo(2)
    elif(y==7):
        foo(3)
    if(foo() == 10):
        print("yello")


use_foo(5,1)
use_foo(5,1)
use_foo(1,7)
use_foo(1,7)
use_foo(1,1)

The reason why I wanted to add this part is , static variables are used not only for incrementing by some value, but also check if the static var is equal to some value, as a real life example.

The static variable is still protected and used only within the scope of the function use_foo()

In this example, call to foo() functions exactly as(with respect to the corresponding c++ equivalent) :

stat_c +=9; // in c++
foo(9)  #python equiv

if(stat_c==10){ //do something}  // c++

if(foo() == 10):      # python equiv
  #add code here      # python equiv       

Output :
yello
yello

if class Foo is defined restrictively as a singleton class, that would be ideal. This would make it more pythonic.

Answer 3

Prompted by this question, may I present another alternative which might be a bit nicer to use and will look the same for both methods and functions:

@static_var2('seed',0)
def funccounter(statics, add=1):
    statics.seed += add
    return statics.seed

print funccounter()       #1
print funccounter(add=2)  #3
print funccounter()       #4

class ACircle(object):
    @static_var2('seed',0)
    def counter(statics, self, add=1):
        statics.seed += add
        return statics.seed

c = ACircle()
print c.counter()      #1
print c.counter(add=2) #3
print c.counter()      #4
d = ACircle()
print d.counter()      #5
print d.counter(add=2) #7
print d.counter()      #8    

If you like the usage, here's the implementation:

class StaticMan(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.__dict__['_d'] = {}

    def __getattr__(self, name):
        return self.__dict__['_d'][name]
    def __getitem__(self, name):
        return self.__dict__['_d'][name]
    def __setattr__(self, name, val):
        self.__dict__['_d'][name] = val
    def __setitem__(self, name, val):
        self.__dict__['_d'][name] = val

def static_var2(name, val):
    def decorator(original):
        if not hasattr(original, ':staticman'):    
            def wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
                return original(getattr(wrapped, ':staticman'), *args, **kwargs)
            setattr(wrapped, ':staticman', StaticMan())
            f = wrapped
        else:
            f = original #already wrapped

        getattr(f, ':staticman')[name] = val
        return f
    return decorator

Answer 4

All of previous solutions attach a counter attribute to the function, usually with convoluted logic to handle the initialization. This is inappropriate for new code.

In Python 3, the right way is to use a nonlocal statement:

counter = 0
def foo():
    nonlocal counter
    counter += 1
    print(f'counter is {counter}')

See PEP 3104 for the specification of the nonlocal statement.

Answer 5

After trying several approaches I end up using an improved version of @warvariuc's answer:

import types

def func(_static=types.SimpleNamespace(counter=0)):
    _static.counter += 1
    print(_static.counter)

Answer 6

This answer builds on @claudiu 's answer.

I found that my code was getting less clear when I always had to prepend the function name, whenever I intend to access a static variable.

Namely, in my function code I would prefer to write:

print(statics.foo)

instead of

print(my_function_name.foo)

So, my solution is to :

1. add a statics attribute to the function
2. in the function scope, add a local variable statics as an alias to my_function.statics

from bunch import *

def static_vars(**kwargs):
    def decorate(func):
        statics = Bunch(**kwargs)
        setattr(func, "statics", statics)
        return func
    return decorate

@static_vars(name = "Martin")
def my_function():
    statics = my_function.statics
    print("Hello, {0}".format(statics.name))

---

Remark

My method uses a class named Bunch, which is a dictionary that supports attribute-style access, a la JavaScript (see the original article about it, around 2000)

It can be installed via pip install bunch

It can also be hand-written like so:

class Bunch(dict):
    def __init__(self, **kw):
        dict.__init__(self,kw)
        self.__dict__ = self