Python Revision - Section III - *args and **kwargs

*args

When a function parameter starts with an asterisk, it allows for an arbitrary number of arguments, and the function takes them in as a tuple of values.

def myfunc(*args):
    return sum(args)*.05

# We can call myfunc with as many parameters as we want
myfunc(40,60,20)

Also, we don’t need to use the word args for it. We can choose any word we want.

def myfunc(*integers):
    return sum(integers)*.05

**kargs

In other hands, Python offers a way to handle arbitrary numbers of keyworded arguments. Instead of creating a tuple of values, **kwargs builds a dictionary of key/value pairs.

def myfunc(**kwargs):
    if 'fruit' in kwargs:
        print(f"My favorite fruit is {kwargs['fruit']}")
    else:
        print("I don't like fruit")

myfunc(fruit='pineapple')

We can combine *args and **kwargs in the same function, but we necessarily have to put *args before **kwargs.

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