Interesting Python I ( function )

how to pass-by-reference?

Many lauguages support pass by value or pass by reference, like C/C++. It copies the address of an argument into the formal parameter. Inside the function, the address is used to access the actual argument used in the call. It means the changes made to the parameter affect the passed argument. In Python, pass by reference is very tricky. There are two kinds of objects: mutable and immutable. string, tuple, numbers are immuable, list, dict, set are muable. When we try to change the value of immuable object, Python will create a copy of reference rather than changing the value of reference. Let us see the code:

    def ref_demo(x):
        print "x=",x," id=",id(x)
        x=42
        print "x=",x," id=",id(x)

    >>> x = 9
    >>> id(x)
    41902552
    >>> ref_demo(x)
    x= 9  id= 41902552
    x= 42  id= 41903752
    >>> id(x)
    41902552
    >>>

We can find when x = 42, the address of x has changed.

And so on, if we pass a mutable object into a function, we can change it value as pass-by-reference.

*args and **kwargs

Before I explain them, I want to metion that * is used to unpack tuple or list into positional arguments and ** is used to it unpacks dictionary into named arguments.

* defines a variable number of arguments. The asterisk character has to precede a variable identifier in the parameter list.

>>> def print_everything(*args):
        for count, thing in enumerate(args):
...         print '{0}. {1}'.format(count, thing)
...
>>> print_everything('apple', 'banana', 'cabbage')
0. apple
1. banana
2. cabbage

** defines an arbitrary number of keyword parameters.

>>> def table_things(**kwargs):
...     for name, value in kwargs.items():
...         print '{0} = {1}'.format(name, value)
...
>>> table_things(apple = 'fruit', cabbage = 'vegetable')
cabbage = vegetable
apple = fruit

A * can appear in function calls as well, as we have just seen in the previous exercise: The semantics is in this case “inverse” to a star in a function definition. An argument will be unpacked and not packed. In other words, the elements of the list or tuple are singularized:

>>> def f(x,y,z):
...     print(x,y,z)
... 
>>> p = (47,11,12)
>>> f(*p)
(47, 11, 12)

There is also a mechanism for an arbitrary number of keyword parameters. To do this, we use the double asterisk “**” notation:

>>> def f(a,b,x,y):
...     print(a,b,x,y)
...
>>> d = {'a':'append', 'b':'block','x':'extract','y':'yes'}
>>> f(**d)
('append', 'block', 'extract', 'yes')

NEO_AKSA