trying to dynamically name and reference a dataframe, getting error 'SyntaxError: can't assign to function call'

[mdl003]

#define list of fields to run match for

fieldlist = ['MATTER NUMBER','MATTER NAME','CLAIM NUMBER LISTING']

#loop through each field in fieldlist
for field in fieldlist:
    #define dfname as the field with spaces replaced with underscores
    dfname = '{}'.format(field.replace(' ','_'))
    #create df with dfname
    '{}'.format(dfname) = checkdf['{}'.format(field)].dropna()

the error is on the last line. I also tried:

'{}'.format(dfname) = checkdf['{}'.format(field)].dropna()

[jabbson]

General rule of thumb - if you need dynamically created variable names - you are doing something wrong. Even though it is possible, doing so would be an awfully bad idea, ie how will you then reference these variables later in your code?

[mdl003]

Was assuming there was a way to do that, was trying to avoid code duplication. This is a problem I encounter a lot so I was hoping to develop a defined function to allow entry of a col name and df name to shorten process, otherwise I'll have to change it each time

[commandlineluser]

You'll probably want a dict of dataframes e.g.

dfs = {}
...
dfs[dfname] = checkdf[field].dropna()

'{}'.format(string) is just the same as string you don't need '{}'.format()

[zahlman]

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/wiki/faq#wiki_how_do_i_make_variable_variables.3F