Q re documentation Python style

[Scott David Daniels]

kj wrote:
> ... I want to document a function that takes a dictionary as argument,
> and this dictionary is expected to have 5 keys.  When the number of mandatory 
 > arguments gets above 4, I find that it's too difficult to remember
 > their order, so I resort to using a dictionary as the single argument.

Do you know you can call a function with mandatory args as keyword args?

     def f(value, scale, metrics, color, age, validity):
         print 'f', value, scale, metrics, color, age, validity
     ...
     f(23, age=6, scale=2.5, metrics=2, validity='strong', color='red')

You can even use your arg dictionaries in transitional code:
     call_dict = {'value': 23, 'age': 6, 'scale': 2.5, 'metrics': 2,
                  'validity': 'strong', 'color': 'red'}
     f(**call_dict)
--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org