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  • Require Keyword Arguments

    July 13th, 2014
    python, tech
    To avoid errors in calling a python function you might want to ensure it's only ever called with keyword arguments. Say you have:
        def score(actual, predicted):
           ...
    
    and you're worried people accidentally call it with the arguments reversed. After all, nothing looks surprising with:
        score(model.predict(data), isRepaid)
    
    We can have a culture where everyone writes in the keyword arguments, as:
        score(actual=isRepaid, predicted=model.predict(data))
    
    This mostly solves the problem, but could we have Python check this for us? Yes! PEP 3102 added this to Python 3+:
        def score(*, actual, predicted):
          ..
    
    But what about the Python 2 series? You could rebuild Python with this patch applied, or you could use a decorator that verifies there are no positional arguments and then calls the original function:
        def poscheck(f):
          def checked_f(*args, **kwargs):
            if args:
              raise PositionalArgumentsError(f)
            f(**kwargs)
          return checked_f
    
        @poscheck
        def score(actual, predicted):
          ...
    
    This is pretty good, but what about a case like this:
        # Split s on newlines ('\n'), returning a list.  These newlines
        # are not normally retained, but if the optional keepends argument
        # is True then they're kept.
        def splitlines(s, keepends=False):
           ...
    
    If someone calls splitlines as splitlines(s, True) that's going to be pretty confusing to a reader. You'd like to make sure writers always make it clear what the boolean is about, so you have a house style where you write splitlines(s, keepends=True). If you used poscheck, though, that would require splitlines(s=s, keepends=True) which is too verbose. So, use poscheck_except instead:
        @poscheck_except(1)
        def splitlines(s, keepends=False):
          ...
    
    This will require that after the first positional argument all other arguments are given with keywords, if present.

    The code is poscheck on github.

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