Non-identifiers in dictionary keys for **expression syntax

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Thu May 23 15:37:18 EDT 2013


On 05/23/2013 12:20 PM, Neil Cerutti wrote:
> On 2013-05-23, Matthew Gilson <m.gilson1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> That's fine, but what is a keyword argument?  According to the glossary
>> (http://docs.python.org/3.3/glossary.html):
>>
>> /"keyword argument/: an argument preceded by an identifier (e.g. name=)
>> in a function call or passed as a value in a dictionary preceded by **."
>>
>> As far as I'm concerned, this leads to some ambiguity in
>> whether the keys of the mapping need to be valid identifiers or
>> not.
>
> I don't see any ambiguity. A keyword argument is an argument
> preceded by an identifier according to the definition. Where are
> you perceiving wiggle room?

--> def func(**kwargs):
...     print(kwargs)
...

--> d = {'foo bar baz':3}

--> func(**d)
{'foo bar baz': 3}

Even though 'foo bar baz' is not a valid identifier, and could not be passed as `func(foo bar baz = 3)`, it still worked 
when going through a dict.

--
~Ethan~



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