**kwargs?

[Michael Hoffman]

Peter Hansen wrote:
> Francois De Serres wrote:
> 

>> *args is documented in the Tutorial. I reckon **kwargs represents a 
>> dictionary of arguments. But I don't quite get the semantics of **x. 
>> Undefined length tuple of undefined length tuples? Are there other 
>> practical use cases for ** (common enough please, I wish I was, but 
>> I'm not a scientist).
> 
> Where did you get "tuples of tuples" for **x ?

I would guess it is confusion from languages where unary * means 
dereference and ** means double dereference.

To the OP: I'm glad you have been reading the tutorial. If you have 
further questions the reference manual is a good place to look:

http://docs.python.org/ref/function.html

Just as you can use a name other than self as the first argument to an 
unbound method, you can call your *args and **kwargs *x and **y instead, 
but they will still act just like *args and **kwargs.

The stars are magic, not the names.
-- 
Michael Hoffman