Arg names in class and function code - Newbie question

[Joe Green]

newspost at lolmc.com (Lol) wrote in message news:<64e13ba5.0304281424.52cb6b5d at posting.google.com>...
> HI all,
> 	Could anyone let me know - do the names you give as arguments HAVE to be
> actual variable names?
> e.g def readFile(filename,dir):
> 	blah blah
> 	return blah
> or even class FileRead(filename,dir):
> 	def doSomething (self,this):
> 		yadda yadda
> 		return yadda
> 
> In the above examples do filename and dir have to be the name of the
> variables to pass as args to the class/functions OR are they descriptive
> so I can pass the real name of the file and directory?


No, they don't. However, if you are using default values, then they
do.

For example:

def myfunc(arg1=None, arg2=None)

Here, if you are calling 'myfunc' and passing it any arguments, you
must call them by name. e.g.

myfunc(arg1='hi', arg2='hello')

Otherwise the interpreter will have no idea what value goes to what
(the order by which you pass the arguments doesn't matter).

If you only have something like:

def myfunc(arg1, arg2)

then you don't have to explitly call them anything, you can do

s1 = 'hi'
s2 = 'hello'

myfunc(s1,s2)

and that should work fine. Experiment on your python shell.

Hope that helps.