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copied!<p><strong>Update:</strong></p> <p>I realized that using <code>**kwargs</code> would not solve the problem. If your programmers change function arguments as they wish, one could, for example, change the function to this:</p> <pre><code>def info(foo, **kwargs): </code></pre> <p>and the old code would break again (because now every function call has to include the first argument).</p> <p>It really comes down to what Bryan says.</p> <hr> <blockquote> <p>(...) people might be adding parameters between <code>spacing</code> and <code>collapse</code> (...)</p> </blockquote> <p>In general, when changing functions, new arguments should always go to the end. Otherwise it breaks the code. Should be obvious.<br> If someone changes the function so that the code breaks, this change has to be rejected.<br> (As Bryan says, it is like a contract)</p> <blockquote> <p>(...) sometimes it's not always clear as to what needs to go in.</p> </blockquote> <p>By looking at the signature of the function (i.e <code>def info(object, spacing=10, collapse=1)</code> ) one should immediately see that every argument that has <strong>not</strong> a default value, is mandatory.<br> <strong><em>What</em></strong> the argument is for, should go into the docstring.</p> <hr> <p><em>Old answer (kept for completeness)</em>:</p> <p><strike> This is probably not a good solution:</p> <p>You can define functions this way:</p> <pre><code>def info(**kwargs): ''' Some docstring here describing possible and mandatory arguments. ''' spacing = kwargs.get('spacing', 15) obj = kwargs.get('object', None) if not obj: raise ValueError('object is needed') </code></pre> <p><code>kwargs</code> is a dictionary that contains any keyword argument. You can check whether a mandatory argument is present and if not, raise an exception.</p> <p>The downside is, that it might not be that obvious anymore, which arguments are possible, but with a proper docstring, it should be fine.</p> <p></strike></p>

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