Pass symbol to Julia function

I am trying to pass a symbol to the hclust function from http://juliastats.github.io/Clustering.jl/stable/hclust.html

from julia import Clustering as C
result = hclust(costs, linkage=":ward")

I keep getting

TypeError: in #hclust, in typeassert, expected Symbol, got String

I also tried

from julia import Main as M
C.hclust(costs, linkage=M.Symbol('ward'))

but same error. I believe this is because PyCall is converting the symbol to a string before passing it through.

Current work around is:

jl = Julia(compiled_modules=False)
M.costs = costs
ctree=jl.eval('hclust(costs, linkage=:ward)')

[tkf]

This is a PyCall issue https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl/issues/11

jl = Julia(compiled_modules=False)
M.costs = costs
ctree=jl.eval('hclust(costs, linkage=:ward)')

If you need to call hclust many times, a slightly better workaround than mutating the global variable in Main is to create a (anonymous) function on the Julia side:

hclust = jl.eval("costs -> hclust(costs, linkage=:ward)")
hclust(costs)

[sibyjackgrove]

@jdupl123 Thank you for the solution. I think using the Main.eval is the best way to go.