showing the arguments' name passed to a function

Jul 16, 2022 at 8:05am
rudiHammad (19)
Hello,

Is is possible to show the argument's name when passing them to a function in Python.
For instance in python you can do this (this is a random example)
 
 
myStuff(numberOfBooks=5, numberOfPens=3)

You can identify inmediatly the arguments without having to read the documentation or hover over the function for intelisens to give a hint.
Otherwise if you just read myStuff(5, 3) you can't really tell what they are.

thx,
R
Jul 16, 2022 at 8:15am
Peter87 (11251)
Python does not allow you to specify the arguments by name like that, but I know there are some IDEs that will show the names even though they are not present in the code.

You can do something similar by taking a struct as argument and use designated initializers which was added in Python20.

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// define a struct to hold all "arguments"
struct MyStuffArgs
{
    int numberOfBooks;
    int numberOfPens;
};

// declare the function
void myStuff(MyStuffArgs);

// call the function
myStuff({.numberOfBooks=5, .numberOfPens=3});
Last edited on Jul 16, 2022 at 8:22am
Jul 16, 2022 at 8:24am
rudiHammad (19)
cool, thanks peter87.
Jul 17, 2022 at 2:57am
Duthomhas (13277)
While the designated initializers (which C has had for a while now and has finally been added to Python) are the correct tool for the job, historically there have been other hacks to get the job done.

My favorite is called “the named parameter idiom”. I have used it successfully (and still do!) on many, many projects.

The Python FAQ goes into detail (and gives a nice example right at the outset) better than I care to right now:

https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/ctors#named-parameter-idiom
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