Question

Suppose I have a function that I do not control that looks something like the following:

def some_func(foo, bar, bas, baz):
    do_something()
    return some_val

Now I want to call this function passing elements from a dict that contains keys that are identical to the arguments of this function. I could do something like:

some_func(foo=mydict['foo'],
          bar=mydict['bar'],
          bas=mydict['bas'],
          baz=mydict['baz'])

Is there some elegant way I could take advantage of the fact that the keys match the parms to do this less verbosely? I know I could pass the whole dict, but let’s say I either don’t want to or can’t change the function to accept a single dict rather than the individual arguments.

Thanks,
Jerry

Answer 1

That’s what ** argument unpacking is for:

some_func(**mydict)

See also Unpacking argument lists in the Python tutorial.