Question

If I declare a function with non keyword arguments such as a tuple and keyword arguments such as a dictionary, are they declared?

For example:

def someFunc(a, *nkw, **kwa):
    nkwList = []
    kwList  = []
    for i in nkw:
        nkwList.append(i)
    for j in kwa:
        kwList.append(j)
    print a, nkwList, kwList

Input:

someFunc(1)

Output:

1 [] []

As you can see, even though I did not pass a tuple and a dictionary, I didnot get Index out of range error when I loop through nkw and kwa. From my understanding, I think *nkw and **kwa are created in the function declaration itself.

Can anyone help me understand this concept?

Answer 1

The tuple and dictionary are always created, even if they are empty (i.e. nothing was passed in them).