[Python-ideas] Let's be more orderly!

[Steven D'Aprano]

On 16/05/13 23:50, Ethan Furman wrote:
> On 05/15/2013 08:16 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> I don't believe it can. Hence, when order is important, you cannot use keyword arguments to provide arguments *even if
>> kwargs are ordered*. But if you write your function like this:
>>
>> def create_element(tag, mapping):
>>      pass
>>
>> and call it like this:
>>
>> create_element('img', OrderedDict([('alt', 'something'), ('src', 'something.jpg')]))
>>
>> then you can get order for free. Yes, it's a little less convenient to use a list of tuples than nice keyword syntax,
>> but that's a solution that doesn't impose any costs on code that doesn't care about ordering.
>
> Which 'free' are you talking about?  Because if the solution requires extra typing and extra visual clutter, it's not free.

Free like a puppy :-)

You make a good point. Perhaps "free" was a bad choice of words. Rather, let me say that if you need ordered keyword arguments, you can have them *right now* without waiting for the day when you can drop support for everything older that Python 3.4 (or whatever version gives you order-preserving kwargs).



-- 
Steven