Python arguments are values that are passed into a function when it’s called. There are different types of arguments in Python, including positional arguments, keyword arguments, default arguments, and variable-length arguments. Let’s take a look at each type with an example.
- Positional Arguments: Positional arguments are the most common type of argument. They are values that are passed into a function in the order in which they appear in the function definition. Here’s an example:
def greet(name, message):
print(message + ", " + name + ". How are you?")
greet("John", "Hello")
In this example, the greet
function takes two positional arguments: name
and message
. When we call the function with greet("John", "Hello")
, the value “John” is assigned to name
and “Hello” is assigned to message
. The function then prints the message “Hello, John. How are you?” to the console.
- Keyword Arguments: Keyword arguments are values that are passed into a function by specifying the parameter name followed by an equal sign and the value. Keyword arguments can be passed in any order. Here’s an example:
def greet(name, message):
print(message + ", " + name + ". How are you?")
greet(message="Hello", name="John")
In this example, we’re calling the greet
function with two keyword arguments: message="Hello"
and name="John"
. The order doesn’t matter because we’re specifying the parameter names. The function then prints the same message as in the previous example.
- Default Arguments: Default arguments are values that are automatically assigned to a parameter if no value is provided when the function is called. Here’s an example:
def greet(name, message="Hello"):
print(message + ", " + name + ". How are you?")
greet("John")
In this example, we have a default argument message="Hello"
. This means that if we call the greet
function without specifying the message
argument, it will automatically use “Hello” as the default value. When we call the function with greet("John")
, the output will be the same as in the previous examples.
- Variable-length Arguments: Variable-length arguments are used when you don’t know how many arguments will be passed into a function. There are two types of variable-length arguments:
*args
and**kwargs
. Here’s an example:
def greet(*names):
for name in names:
print("Hello, " + name + ". How are you?")
greet("John", "Jane", "Bob")
In this example, we’re using the *args
syntax to define a variable-length argument names
. This means that we can pass in any number of arguments, which will be collected into a tuple inside the function. We’re then using a loop to iterate over the tuple and print a greeting message to each name.
I hope this helps you understand the different types of Python arguments!