[Python-ideas] Treat underscores specially in argument lists

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Andrew Barnert writes:

 > So anyway, what if you needed the index, but not the name or mode? 
 > You can't use *_ to get around that; you have to come up with two
 > dummy names. That's a bit annoying.

If there's one such function, I'd say "suck it up".  If there are two
or more, hit it with a two-by-four and it will submit:

def twobyfour (func):
    def wrapper(real1, dummy1, real2, dummy2):
        return func(real1, real2)
    return wrapper

 > >> Why are you ignoring *any* arguments?

I wouldn't express the idea that way.  Obviously we're ignoring
arguments because there's a caller that supplies them.

Rather, I'd say "in my experience ignoring arguments means a badly
designed API that should be refactored."  That's true in callbacks as
well as in any other function.  Granted, sometimes you can't refactor,
but I think more often than not ignoring arguments is a code smell and
you can.