Question

I have a method which looks like this:

def order_by(*args):
    print list(args)

Is there a way I could pass a list of three items and have each item in the list passed as an individual parameters?

params = ['a', 'b', 'c']

would equate to

order_by('a', 'b', 'c')

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The *arguments syntax can be used for calling functions too, provided params is an iterable:

order_by(*params)

See the calls syntax specification.

For an actual dictionary, use the **kwargs syntax:

params = dict(a='a', b='b', c='c')
somemethod(**params)

where somemethod accepts a, b and c arguments or has a **kw catch-all argument. Note that **params does not work if all your function defines is a *args positional argument catch-all.