[SciPy-user] General Python Question: nested function calls

[Ryan Krauss]

I often write code something like this:

def TruncatePickleFile(pathin, trigname='a', trigtype='sw',
savepath=None, threshlevel=None, duration=0.05, backup=0.01):
    """Trunate the pickleddatafile whose path is pathin.  If
    trigtype=='lg', use a DropDownLightGateTrigger, else use a
    standard Trigger."""
    untrunc = pickleddatafiles.PickledDataFile(pathin)
    mytrunc = pickleddatafiles.TruncateDataObj(untrunc,
threshlevel=threshlevel, backup=backup, duration=duration)
    mytrunc.chname = trigname
    if trigtype == 'lg':
        mytrunc.SetupTrigger(DataProcMixins.DropDownLightGateTrigger)
    else:
        mytrunc.SetupTrigger()
    mytrunc.SetupTruncChannel()
    mytrunc.Truncate()
    pathout = mytrunc.Pickle(savepath)
    return pathout

def TruncatePickleFiles(listin, trigname='a', trigtype='sw',
threshlevel=None, duration=0.05, backup=0.01):
    listout = []
    for item in listin:
        print item
        curpath = TruncatePickleFile(item, trigname=trigname,
trigtype=trigtype, threshlevel=threshlevel, duration=duration,
backup=backup)
        listout.append(curpath)
    return listout

where TruncatePickleFiles is sort of just a vectorization of
TruncatePickleFile, but with some of the keyword args set.  My problem
is not that this might not be the fastest way to execute the code, but
that I get tired of doing this kind of stuff:

curpath = TruncatePickleFile(item, trigname=trigname,
trigtype=trigtype, threshlevel=threshlevel, duration=duration,
backup=backup)

but I also don't want to just do

def TruncatePickleFiles(listin, **kwargs):

because I like to see the defaults and know what keyword arguments are legal.

Does anyone else have this problem or have an elegant solution to it?
The problem comes up for me also when I want a derived class to call a
parent class's method in some partially overwritten method of the
derived class.

Ideally, I think I would like to pass **kwargs to the nested function,
but without using **kwargs in the definition of the top function, if
that makes any sense.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Ryan