How to find the name of the current function?

Question

I know it seems lame, but I'd like to have a function get access to its own name for printing error or debugging messages. It would be easy then to have a standard way to start the printout:

print(__myname__,"is reporting the following..."

I prefer this to having to explicitly type the name each time because I often want to cut and paste such things, and I'd like any name change to be automatic, and thus more robustly correct.

This is similar to another question but I want the name of the current function, not the name of its caller.

I note that the special name

__name__

in this spot is reporting the name of the package, not the name of the function.

@mypetlion this does not look like a proper duplicate, because the OP wants to find the name of the currently executed function without referring to it explicitly. — bereal
– bereal, Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 22:23
Possible duplicate of How to get the caller's method name in the called method? — codeforester
– codeforester, Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 22:31

zch · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-24 22:31:02Z

4

You can use traceback module to extract stack information:

import traceback

def current_function_name():
    return traceback.extract_stack()[-2][2]    

def foo():
    print current_function_name()

>>> foo()
foo

answered Sep 24, 2018 at 22:31

zch

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2 Comments

user2357112 Over a year ago

It's going to be way more expensive than a string literal, though.

4dummies Over a year ago

Since it's for debugging, I don't much care.

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