GRADE XII - CS - TYPES OF ARGUMENTS | FUNCTIONS

 FUNCTIONS

Types of Arguments

• Python supports 4 types of arguments

1. Positional Arguments

2. Default Arguments

3. Keyword Arguments

4. Variable Length Arguments

 

1. Positional Arguments : These are the arguments which are passed in correct positional order in function.

def greet(name, age):     #THESE ARE PARAMETERS

    print("Hello", name, "you are", age, "years old.")

greet("Shreya", 12)      # THESE ARE ARGUMENTS

 

2. Default Arguments : These are the arguments through which we can provide default values to the function.

• If we don’t pass any value to the function then it will take a pre defined value.

You can set a default value for a parameter.

 

def greet(name, age=10):

    print("Hello", name, "you are", age, "years old.")

 

greet("Sanya")         # uses default age

greet("Maya", 14)    # overrides default

OUTPUT:

Hello Bob you are 10 years old.

Hello Maya you are 14 years old.

 In function definitions, default arguments should always come after non-default arguments.

3. Keyword Arguments

You can pass values by specifying the parameter names, so order doesn't matter.

• If a function have many arguments and we want to change the sequence of them then we have to use keyword arguments.

• Biggest benefit of keyword argument is that we need not to remember the position of the argument.

• For this whenever we pass the values to the function then we pass the values with the argument name. e.g.

def student_info(name, grade):

            print("Name:", name)

            print("Grade:", grade)

student_info(grade=6, name="Zara")

OUTPUT:

Name: Zara

Grade: 6

def wish(name, message):

    print("Hello", name + "!", message)

# Calling the function using keyword arguments

wish(name="Preeti", message="Good luck on your exam!")

 

4. Variable-Length Arguments : 

As we can assume by the name that we can pass any number of arguments according to the requirement. Such arguments are known as variable length arguments. We use (*) asterik to give Variable length argument.

def sum(*n):

            s=0

            for i in n:

                        s=s+i

            print("the sum is=",s)

sum()

sum(10)

sum(10,20)

sum(10,20,30)

You can notice here that every time the number of arguments are different and the answer is calculated for each number of arguments.