005__use_*args

Use *args

When designing Python functions, it's essential to make them as flexible and versatile as possible. Using *args allows to create functions that can accept a variable number of positional arguments, making them more adaptable to different use cases.

What is *args?

• *args is a special syntax in Python that allows a function to accept an arbitrary number of positional arguments.
• The name “args” is a convention, but it could be any valid variable name (e.g., *values, *elements, etc.).
• While defining a function with *args in the parameter list, it collects all the positional arguments passed to the function into a tuple.

Use case

• *args is handy when you don’t know in advance how many arguments a function will receive.
• Creating generic utility functions (e.g., sum, max, min) that work with any number of inputs.
• Writing decorators that wrap other functions and need to handle varying argument counts.

Example

def join_text(*args, sep: str) -> str:
    return sep.join(args)

def main() -> None:
    print(join_text('A', 'B', 'C', sep='-'))
    print(join_text('X', 'Y', 'Z', sep='/'))

Benefits

• Flexibility
• Simplicity
• Code resuability
• Reduced / avoid repetition
• Compability
• Conciseness
• Variable length arguments