What value should be passed to make a function use the default argument value?

[Steve Holden]

Antoon Pardon wrote:
> On 2006-10-12, Magnus Lycka <lycka at carmen.se> wrote:
> 
>>Antoon Pardon wrote:
>>
>>>Well maybe he didn't intend that, but how is the reader of the
>>>documentation to know that? The reader can only go by how
>>>things are documented. If those are not entirely consistent
>>>with the intend of the programmer, that is not the readers
>>>fault.
>>
>>I don't think I ever assumed that it was right to call functions
>>with keyword arguments if they weren't defined with keyword
>>parameters,
> 
> 
> I'm not sure I follow here. AFAICS, you can't define keyword
> parameters. You can give default values to parameters but
> this is orthogonal to calling a function with keywords.
> 
Yup, that's a point that the documentation doesn't make stringly enough.

> If we somehow want to seperate parameters in those that
> can be used with a keyword and those that don't it has
> to be something different than providing a default value
> to that parameter.
> 
Indeed.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC/Ltd          http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb       http://holdenweb.blogspot.com
Recent Ramblings     http://del.icio.us/steve.holden