Create an unknown number of programmatically defined variables

I have a recursive function that can produce a difficult-to-know number of expressions, each needing a new variable multiplied to it. These variables will later be removed out by calculations involving integration or residue.

How can I develop these unknown number of variables? Maybe indexed? All examples I've seen on the internet are working with an a priori known object of a definite size, e.g. "item" in How can you dynamically create variables via a while loop? or Accessing the index in Python 'for' loops

I think I can boil it down to this simple example to use in my real script:

import sympy as s
p0,p1,p2,p3,p4=s.symbols('p0 p1 p2 p3 p4')
l = [p0, p1, p2, p3, p4]

def f(n):
    if n == 0:
        return l[n]
    elif n == 1: 
        return l[n]
    else:
        return f(n-1)*l[n]+f(n-2)

f(3) # works
f(6) # doesnt' work - need to define ahead of time the 
     # dummy variables l[6], l[5], .... 
     # even if they are just symbols for (much) later numerical evaluation.

I need this above snippet to actually generate the needed unknowns ahead of time.

I saw some mentions of pandas, but couldn't find a good example for my need, nor even sure if that was the best route. Also saw things like, "...an unknown number of lines [file]...", or "...unknown number of arguments...", but those are, seemingly, not applicable.

Solution

Indexed objects represent an abstract thing with an index taking any values, with no restriction on how large the index can be.

import sympy as s
p = s.IndexedBase("p")

def f(n):
    if n == 0 or n == 1:
        return p[n]
    else:
        return f(n-1)*p[n] + f(n-2)

print(f(7))

Output

(p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[3] + (((p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[3] + p[1])*p[4] + p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[5] + (((p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[3] + p[1])*p[4] + ((p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[3] + (((p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[3] + p[1])*p[4] + p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[5] + p[1])*p[6] + p[0] + p[1]*p[2])*p[7] + p[1]

As an aside, things like p0,p1,p2,p3,p4=s.symbols('p0 p1 p2 p3 p4') can be done more easily with syms = s.symbols('p0:5') or even

n = ...
syms = s.symbols('p0:{}'.format(n))

This creates individual symbols, not an indexed object, so the number n has to be known at the time of creation. But still easier than listing p0 p1 and so on.