The Sourcerer

Variadic Positional and Keyword Arguments - The Python Saga - Part 1

Python supports "variadic" arguments. Variadic arguments are the man behind the curtain for C's printf function. The idea is that a function can accept a variable number of positional arguments, the values to put in your format string. In C this is accomplished with an ellipsis, ..., and some VA macro-linked-list-stuff that I always have to look up. Python goes a couple steps further with variadic arguments and the results are stunning, orthogonal, and actually useful almost every day. With Python, you get both "positional" arguments, like C, and keyword arguments: those arguments that conceptually map, in any order, to the names of the arguments in your function's declaration. The magic symbols are "*" and "**" for positional and keyword arguments respectively. With one "*", you can declare a function that accepts any number of arguments as the declared list object:

def foo(*args):
	return args
assert foo(1, 2, 3) == [1, 2, 3]

You can also pass an array of positional arguments to a function with very similar syntax:

def foo(a, b, c):
	return [a, b, c]
assert foo(*[1, 2, 3]) == [1, 2, 3]

And you can do the same thing with keyword arguments except you use dictionaries:

def foo(**kwargs):
	return kwargs
assert foo(a = 10, b = 20, c = 30) == {'a': 10, 'b': 20, 'c': 30}

Likewise, you can pass keyword arguments:

def foo(a, b, c):
	return [a, b, c]
assert foo(**{'a': 10, 'b': 20, 'c': 30}) == [10, 20, 30]

You can use them in combination, along with default arguments to provide beautiful, orthogonal, reusable abstractions:

def foo(a, b = None, c = None, d = None):
	return [a, b, c, d]
assert foo(*[1, 2], **{'c': 3}) == [1, 2, 3, None]
def bar(a, b, c, *args, **kws):
	return [a, b, c], args, kws
assert bar(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, f = 6) == ([1, 2, 3], [4], {'f': 5})