How do I get a dictionary of argument names with their default values?

Noah noah at noah.org
Thu Dec 22 17:36:05 EST 2005


Is there a simple way to get a dictionary of
argument names and their default values for
a method or function? I came up with one solution, but
I feel like Python must have a simpler way.

Python provide a way to get a sequence of
argument names and a different way to get a
sequence of default argument values. Since
default values have to come at the end of an
argument list you can match up the values in the
default values sequence to the values in the
argument list sequence.

The following seems to work on both functions and methods::

    def func_arg_defaults_dict (func):
        default_dict = {}
        if func.func_defaults is not None:
            da_start = len(func.func_code.co_names) -
len(func.func_defaults)
            for i in range(len(func.func_defaults)):
                arg_name = func.func_code.co_names[da_start+i]
                arg_value = func.func_defaults[i]
                default_dict [arg_name] = arg_value
        return default_dict

    def foo (f1, f2, f3, f4='F4', a5='F5'):
        print f1, f2, f3, f4, f5

    class fu:
        def foo (self, m1, m2, m3, m4='M4', m5='M5'):
            print m1, m2, m3, m4, m5

    f = fu()

    # test function
    print func_arg_defaults_dict (foo)
    # test method
    print func_arg_defaults_dict (f.foo)

Running the script prints this::

    {'f4': 'F4', 'f5': 'F5'}
    {'m5': 'M5', 'm4': 'M4'}

Is func_arg_defaults_dict() reasonable? It seems a bit convoluted.
I hope there is a more obvious way.

Yours,
Noah




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