On 22/06/2013 11:27, Anders Hovmöller wrote:

Keyword arguments are great for increasing readability and making code
more robust but in my opinion they are underused compared to the gains
they can provide. You often end up with code like:

foo(bar=bar, baz=baz, foobaz=foobaz)

which is less readable than the ordered argument version when the names
of the variables and the keywords match. ( Here's another guy pointing
out the same thing:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7041752/any-reason-not-to-always-use-keyword-arguments#comment8553765_7041986)

I have a suggestion that I believe can enable more usage of keyword
arguments while still retaining almost all the brevity of ordered
arguments: if the variable name to the right of the equal sign equals
the keyword argument ("foo=foo") make it optional to just specify the
name once ("=foo"). For completeness I suggest also make the same change
for dictionaries: {'foo': foo} -> {:foo}. This change would turn the
following code:

a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
d = {'a':a, 'b':b, 'c':c}
foo(a=a, b=b, c=c)

into:

a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
d = {:a, :b, :c}

Shouldn't that mean:

    d = {a:a, b:b, c:c}

foo(=a, =b, =c)


This should be compatible with existing code bases since the new forms
are syntax errors in current python.

What do you think?

I'm not convinced.

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