yup, thanks for the heads up, it worked for me. I realized that most of that was unnecessary, this is what I was talking about: import gc, sys def show(

yup, thanks for the heads up, it worked for me. I realized that most of that was unnecessary, this is what I was talking about: import gc, sys def show(*args): for obj in args: frame = sys._getframe(1) for k,v in frame.f_locals.iteritems(): if v is obj: print "%s=%r" % (k,v) a, b, c, d, e, = False, 1, [1,2,3], {'x':2 }, map show(a, b, c, d, e) outputs: a=False b=1 c=[1, 2, 3] d={'x': 2} e=<built-in function map> [ http://codepad.org/4JogU069 http://codepad.org/4JogU069 ] [ edit: slight cleanup]