Question

When “deconstructing” a tuple, I can use _ to denote tuple elements I’m not interested in, e.g.

>>> a,_,_ = (1,2,3)
>>> a
1

Using Python 2.x, how can I express the same with function arguments? I tried to use underscores:

>>> def f(a,_,_): return a
...
  File "<stdin>", line 1
SyntaxError: duplicate argument '_' in function definition

I also tried to just omit the argument altogether:

>>> def f(a,,): return a
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    def f(a,,): return a
        ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Is there another way to achieve the same?

Answer 1

Here’s what I do with unused arguments:

def f(a, *unused):
    return a