All, is there a reason why in some functions (min, max...) optional parameters are parsed by position instead of by keyword ? OK, let me give you an example: #----------------------------------------------- def amin(a, axis=None, out=None): try: amin = a.min except AttributeError: return _wrapit(a, 'min', axis, out) return amin(axis, out) #----------------------------------------------- * Why using amin(axis,out) instead of amin(axis=axis,out=out) ? * Would it be possible to add some optional keywords to amin/amax, so that a "fill_value" parameter would be recognized by numpy.min when dealing with masked arrays ? A modified amin would then be like: def amin(a, axis=None, out=None, **kwargs): try: amin = a.min except AttributeError: return _wrapit(a, 'min', axis=axis, out=out, **kwargs) return amin(axis=axis, out=out, **kwargs) Am I missing something ?