Well, my Perl way of doing it would be to have all attributes in a dict (hash), then create the accessor vi a dynamic function. I knew Python would have a right way to do it for Python, but when I went looking I neglected to look at the core of the language. I suppose I'm just too accustomed to the TIMTOWTDY approach to expect the one-ring-to-bind-them-all solution. :-) It's a mental shift on my part, to be certain.
What I was actually doing was reading a user configuration file and setting an object's variables--the example I got was a fairly close approximation of how I was trying to approach it before setattr(). Thanks, Ben -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list