Keyword arguments - strange behaviour?

[Steven Bethard]

Fuzzyman wrote:
>>>Steven Bethard wrote:
>>>>
>>>>So, one of my really common use cases that takes advantage of the
>>>>fact that default parameters are evaluated at function definition
>>>>time:
>>>>
>>>>def foo(bar, baz, matcher=re.compile(r'...')):
>>>>    ...
>>>>    text = matcher.sub(r'...', text)
>>>>    ...
> Sure.. but you also gave an example of an alternative that was complex,

Interesting.  I would have thought that my example was pretty simple. 
Maybe it would be helpful to generalize it to:

def foo(bar, baz, spam=badger(x, y, z)):
     ...

All it does is use a default value that was produced by a function call. 
  I'm surprised you haven't run into this situation before...

Of course, what is complex or simple is a matter of personal opinion.  I 
use this pattern so often that it's quite simple to me, but I guess I 
can understand that if you don't use such a pattern, it might seem 
foreign to you.

Steve