[Tutor] Confounded again

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

I posted a reply saying you couldn't call a function like:

f(i=5)

And this is true. But apparently within a class method you can!
Does anyone know how this works? Here is a session showing what 
I did...

Python 2.2.1 (#34, Apr  9 2002, 19:34:33) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def foo (i):
...   print i
...
>>> foo(j = 7)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: foo() got an unexpected keyword argument 'j'

So that failed, as I expected.

>>> class C:
...   def __init__(s,i):
...     print i
...
>>> class D(C):
...    def __init__(s):
...      C.__init__(s, i = 7)
...

Now I expected an error here, but if not then definitely when 
I tried calling it as in:

>>> d = D()
7
>>>

But it worked! How?

And just to check that it wasn't the nesting that allowed it, 
I tried it again inside a function:

>>> def bar():
...    foo(n=9)
...
>>> bar()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in bar
TypeError: foo() got an unexpected keyword argument 'n'
>>>

Yep, still an error.

I'm confused (again),

Alan g.
Author of the 'Learning to Program' web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld