**kwargs

[Matt Gushee]

sp00fD <sp00fD at yahoo.com> writes:

> Does **kwargs represent a dictionary? If so, can I have a method like
> such
> 
> def foo(self, foo=None, bar=None, **kwargs)
> 
> and then do something like
> 
> this_dict = {}
> ..insert stuff into this_dict..
> 
> my.foo(foo="something", bar="something else", this_dict)

Ah, well, you've *sort of* got the right idea here.

> ? How would I do something like this ?

No need to. **kwargs is magic! You can do this:

    my.foo(foo="something", bar="something else", food="spam",
	   thug="Dinsdale")

... and the keyword arguments 'food' and 'thug' are automatically
folded into a dictionary, so that *within* the my.foo() method:

    kwargs['food']  =>  'spam'
    kwargs['thug']  =>  'Dinsdale'
    kwargs          =>  {'food': 'spam', 'thug': 'Dinsdale'}

Note that the name 'kwargs' has no meaning for the Python interpreter
-- it's just a convention. The double asterisk is what works the
magic.

-- 
Matt Gushee
Portland, Maine, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/