Thank you Isaiah and Patrick.
The source is a Dict{ASCIIstring, Any}. From your answers I realized, I can
instead use Dict{Symbol, Any} as the source and then use either Don's or
Isaiah's syntax.
Yes, I was thinking that may be I should use a Dict. But then I would have
to use Dict{ASCIIstring, Any} type. I was not sure (because I don't know
about these things) whether that would affect the performance adversely
(because of the Any). While Dict{ASCIIstring, Any} is a source that is used
to change *inst, inst *is used multiple times in the program. Once it's
value is changed, its type is known completely when it is used those
multiple times.
On Sunday, September 14, 2014 11:09:56 AM UTC-4, Patrick O'Leary wrote:
>
> On Saturday, September 13, 2014 6:47:46 PM UTC-5, curiou...@gmail.com
> wrote:
>>
>> However, suppose the field that has to be changed is determined by the
>> program. Say, I have,
>>
>> varToChange = "numLines"
>>
>> How can I use *varToChange* to change the value of *numLines* in *inst*?
>>
>
> Here are a couple of alternatives.
>
> Depending on the source of your "numLines", you can assign the symbol
> directly, rather than via a string and a call to symbol(), combining it
> with either Don or Isaiah's syntaxes:
>
> varToChange = :numLines
>
> If this is the sort of thing you find you are doing often, a composite
> type may not be the correct data structure for your application. Consider a
> Dict:
>
> inst = Dict{String, Any}()
> inst["numLines"] = 10
> inst["avgLength"] = 8.5
> inst[varToChange] = 20
>
> Patrick
>
