What does ** (double star/asterisk) and * (star/asterisk) do for parameters?
The *args
and **kwargs
is a common idiom to allow arbitrary number of arguments to functions as described in the section more on defining functions in the Python documentation.
The *args
will give you all function parameters as a tuple:
def foo(*args):
for a in args:
print(a)
foo(1)
# 1
foo(1,2,3)
# 1
# 2
# 3
The **kwargs
will give you all
keyword arguments except for those corresponding to a formal parameter as a dictionary.
def bar(**kwargs):
for a in kwargs:
print(a, kwargs[a])
bar(name='one', age=27)
# age 27
# name one
Both idioms can be mixed with normal arguments to allow a set of fixed and some variable arguments:
def foo(kind, *args, **kwargs):
pass
It is also possible to use this the other way around:
def foo(a, b, c):
print(a, b, c)
obj = {'b':10, 'c':'lee'}
foo(100,**obj)
# 100 10 lee
Another usage of the *l
idiom is to unpack argument lists when calling a function.
def foo(bar, lee):
print(bar, lee)
l = [1,2]
foo(*l)
# 1 2
In Python 3 it is possible to use *l
on the left side of an assignment (Extended Iterable Unpacking), though it gives a list instead of a tuple in this context:
first, *rest = [1,2,3,4]
first, *l, last = [1,2,3,4]
Also Python 3 adds new semantic (refer PEP 3102):
def func(arg1, arg2, arg3, *, kwarg1, kwarg2):
pass
Such function accepts only 3 positional arguments, and everything after *
can only be passed as keyword arguments.
It's also worth noting that you can use *
and **
when calling functions as well. This is a shortcut that allows you to pass multiple arguments to a function directly using either a list/tuple or a dictionary. For example, if you have the following function:
def foo(x,y,z):
print("x=" + str(x))
print("y=" + str(y))
print("z=" + str(z))
You can do things like:
>>> mylist = [1,2,3]
>>> foo(*mylist)
x=1
y=2
z=3
>>> mydict = {'x':1,'y':2,'z':3}
>>> foo(**mydict)
x=1
y=2
z=3
>>> mytuple = (1, 2, 3)
>>> foo(*mytuple)
x=1
y=2
z=3
Note: The keys in mydict
have to be named exactly like the parameters of function foo
. Otherwise it will throw a TypeError
:
>>> mydict = {'x':1,'y':2,'z':3,'badnews':9}
>>> foo(**mydict)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: foo() got an unexpected keyword argument 'badnews'
The single * means that there can be any number of extra positional arguments. foo()
can be invoked like foo(1,2,3,4,5)
. In the body of foo() param2 is a sequence containing 2-5.
The double ** means there can be any number of extra named parameters. bar()
can be invoked like bar(1, a=2, b=3)
. In the body of bar() param2 is a dictionary containing {'a':2, 'b':3 }
With the following code:
def foo(param1, *param2):
print(param1)
print(param2)
def bar(param1, **param2):
print(param1)
print(param2)
foo(1,2,3,4,5)
bar(1,a=2,b=3)
the output is
1
(2, 3, 4, 5)
1
{'a': 2, 'b': 3}