What does this mean: *args, **kwargs? And why would we use it?
Putting *args and/or **kwargs as the last items in your function definition’s argument list allows that function to accept an arbitrary number of arguments and/or keyword arguments.
You don’t actually have to call them args and kwargs, that’s just a convention. It’s the * and ** that do the magic.
In other words we can pass a variable number of arguments to a function using special symbols (there are two special symbols).
*args - (Non-Keyword Arguments)
-
Allows you to take more arguments than the number of formal arguments that you previously defined.
-
Using the
*, the variable that we associate with the*becomes an iterable.
Example:
def myFun(*argv):
for arg in argv:
print (arg)
myFun("You", "are", "learning", "something", "new", "today!")
# Output:
You
are
learning
something
new
today!
**kwargs - (Keyword Arguments)
We use with double star. The reason is because the double star allows us to pass through keyword arguments (and any number of them).
A keyword argument is where you provide a name to the variable.
Example:
def myFun(**kwargs):
for key, value in kwargs.items():
print ("%s == %s" %(key, value))
myFun(First = "Hello!", Second = "I am", Third= "Ellie")
# Output:
First == Hello!
Second == I am
Third == Ellie