Python Position and Keyword Only Arguments

What does / and * mean in a Python function definition mean

Recently when I was teaching PythonToProject bootcamp, one of my students had a question about Python's __new__ function. __new__ The function lets you manipulate how you create your objects. That wasn't what caught my eye.

We all know about *args and **kwargs in function calls. But have you seen something like these

def new_function(x, /, y, z):
    pass
    
def new_function_1(x, y, z, *, scale):
    pass

You can use the help method to understand any object, class, or function in Python. To show my students that __new__ and __init__ are default constructs that are available even in builtin classes like int or float I ran the following in the Python shell

help(int) # will show that int is a class 


help(int.__new__) # will show that a __new__ method exists
>>> help(int.__new__)

Help on built-in function __new__:

__new__(*args, **kwargs) method of builtins.type instance
    Create and return a new object.  See help(type) for an accurate signature.
(END)

When I ran it for __init__

help(int.__init__) # BOOM! I learned something new. 

Help on wrapper_descriptor:

__init__(self, /, *args, **kwargs)
    Initialize self.

Did you see it yet?

The __init__(self, /, *args, **kwargs) line. What is that / doing in the middle of the function definition? You can also replace / it with * and these are two new features introduced in 3.8

Position Only Arguments

To enforce that a function accepts certain arguments only based on their position and not by their name, you mention them in the function definition and follow it up with a /.All arguments following the / can be positional or keyword based

A good use case for this is cases where the position of the argument means something.

def point(x, y, z, /, scale=1):
    pass

For the above function, if you pass point(x=10, y=20, z=30) will raise an error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: point() got some positional-only arguments passed as keyword arguments: 'x, y, z'

Here is a bonus example for you.

def rgb_to_hex(r, g, b, /):
    pass

Keyword Only Arguments

Similarly, you can enforce a function to pass keyword-only args by prepending the list of args with a * -PEP3102

All arguments before the * can be positional. Python's sorted method is a wonderful example for this. It uses both keyword and positional args.

def sorted(iterable, /, *, key=None, reverse=False)
    ...

When you pass keyword-only args as positional args, the function will behave as if an unknown argument is passed

x = [1, 2, 3]
sorted(x, True)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: sorted expected 1 argument, got 2

Whereas when you do

sorted(x, reverse=True)
[3, 2, 1]

---

Next time when you write an function and want to enforce the users to use position or keyword based arguments, you know how to implement it.