Question

I’m thinking of using **kwargs in an unusual way: as data provider and not as overloading substituting tool. In this way all keyword arguments should be of one type, for example specifically formed tuple, and no way else. In example:

class SomeClass(object):
    '''All **kwargs should be in ("string", 1, True) form'''
    def __init__(self, some_param, **kwargs):
        self.param = some_param
        for arg in kwargs.itervalues():
            if not isinstance(arg[0], str):
            ...

        self.some_dict = kwargs

Is it OK to do so? I feel… strange, it seems uncanonical.

Answer 1

See what the dict constructor does in Python:

>>> dict(one=1, two=2, three=3)
{'three': 3, 'two': 2, 'one': 1}

Also a “creative” use of keyword arguments. If this works for a standard type, and makes sense in your application, go for it.