2.6. Function

2.6.1. **kwargs: Pass Multiple Arguments to a Function in Python

Sometimes you might not know the arguments you will pass to a function. If so, use **kwargs.

**kwargs allow you to pass multiple arguments to a function using a dictionary. In the example below, passing **{'a':1, 'b':2} to the function is similar to passing a=1, b=1 to the function.

Once **kwargs argument is passed, you can treat it like a Python dictionary.

parameters = {'a': 1, 'b': 2}

def example(c, **kwargs):
    print(kwargs)
    for val in kwargs.values():
        print(c + val)

example(c=3, **parameters)
{'a': 1, 'b': 2}
4
5

2.6.2. Decorator in Python

Do you want to add the same block of code to different functions in Python? If so, try decorator.

In the code below, I created the decorator to track the time of the function say_hello.

import time 

def time_func(func):
    def wrapper():
        print("This happens before the function is called")
        start = time.time()
        func()
        print('This happens after the funciton is called')
        end = time.time()
        print('The duration is', end - start, 's')

    return wrapper

Now all I need to do is to add @time_func before the function say_hello.

@time_func
def say_hello():
    print("hello")

say_hello()
This happens before the function is called
hello
This happens after the funciton is called
The duration is 0.0002987384796142578 s

Decorator makes the code clean and shortens repetitive code. If I want to track the time of another function, for example, func2(), I can just use:

@time_func
def func2():
    pass
func2()
This happens before the function is called
This happens after the funciton is called
The duration is 4.38690185546875e-05 s
from typing import List, Dict

def