*args and **kwargs in Python

 So here I'm gonna explain what are the *args and **kwargs, and what is their use of it. let's Begin

You can *args and **kwargs are the magic variables. so first of all it is not necessary to write *args and **kwargs, and only an asterisk (*) is needed also you can write *something and **somethings. it is just for understanding we take *args and **kwargs

*args:

Assume we have a function name sum which takes two parameters X and Y and this function return sum of those two values. function code is below:

def sum(x,y):

return x+y

print(sum(10,3)) # 13

now we need function which can give us sum of three values so what if we pass three arguments in this function?

TypeError: sum() takes exactly 2 arguments (3 given)

So we need to change our function definition but how many times have you will change it?

so for this type of situation, there is a magic variable called *args

function definition using *args is below:

def sum(x,y,*args):

result = x + y

for i in args:

result += i

return result

print(sum(10,3,14,23,25)) # 75

so this was basic knowledge about *args, I hope you understand the use of *args, Now let's move on to **kwargs

**kwargs:

You should use **kwargs if you want to handle named arguments in a function, let me explain with example.

def details(**kwargs):

for key, value in kwargs.items():

print(f"{key} = {value}")

details(name="apnacodingadda",subject="Programming",topic="*args and **kwargs")

#output:

# name = apnacodingadda

# subject = Programming

# topic = *args and **kwargs

So as you can see we handle a bunch of arguments with help of **kwargs so this was basically about **kwargs.

Remember When we are using *args then Extra parameters (which *args handling those parameter) are stored in tuple and **kwargs stored those arguments in dictionary (as there are key,value pair)

If you want to use them both and want some other must-pass parameter in function then the order would like this --   def func(other,*args,**kwargs) 

When to use them?

There are lot of use of *args and **kwargs . the most common use is in making function decorators.

and also these are use in Monkey Patching (modifying code at run time) 

So that was all basics about *args and **kwargs 

Thank You 😊😊