Is there a way to access and change variables in a list?

Question

I am trying to simplify this code for an Oregon trail game:

if choice==1:
        oxen+=amount
    elif choice==2:
        food+=amount
    elif choice==3:
        clothing+=amount
    elif choice==4:
        ammo+=amount
    elif choice==5:
        parts+=amount

I would like to be able to do something more with this "feel":

shop_list=[oxen, food, clothing, ammo, parts]
shop_list[choice]+=amount

Is there any way to implement something similar? Mind that I would like to keep the values stored as their own variable, not only as values inside of a list.

I tried the previous idea, and had results that would not work as expected, only changing the value in the list, Not the global variable.

Answer 1

You can achieve your preferred behavior using a dictionary to store the state. In the following code snippet the possible choices are stored in a tuple.

choice, amount = 1, 3

choice_options = ("oxen", "food", "clothing", "ammo", "parts")

shop_state = {
    "oxen": 0,
    "food": 0,
    "clothing": 0,
    "ammo": 0,
    "parts": 0
}

shop_state[choice_options[choice - 1]] += amount

print(shop_state)

Output:

{'oxen': 3, 'food': 0, 'clothing': 0, 'ammo': 0, 'parts': 0}