CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Ben
Ben

Reputation: 21625

Python using *args with default argument

Python newb here. Suppose you have a function like 

def myfunc(a = "apple", *args):
    print(a)
    for b in args:
        print(b + "!")

How do you pass a set of unnamed arguments to *args without altering the default argument?

What I want to do is

myfunc(,"banana", "orange")

and get the output

apple
banana!
orange!

but this doesn't work.

(I'm sure this has been discussed before but all my searching came up empty)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 119

Answers (1)

Ashwini Chaudhary
Ashwini Chaudhary

Reputation: 250891

In Python 3 you can do this by changing a to a keyword only argument:

>>> def myfunc(*args, a="apple"):
        print(a)
        for b in args:
            print(b + "!")
...         
>>> myfunc("banana", "orange")
apple
banana!
orange!
>>> myfunc("banana", "orange", a="watermelon")
watermelon
banana!
orange!

In Python 2 you'll have to do something like this:

>>> def myfunc(*args, **kwargs):
        a = kwargs.pop('a', 'apple')
        print a 
        for b in args:
             print b + "!"

Upvotes: 2

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