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how well do you know python, part 3

Here's one to file in the "cryptic documentation" category. 
>>> import inspect
>>> help(inspect.getargspec)
Help on function getargspec in module inspect:

getargspec(func)
    Get the names and default values of a function's arguments.
    
    A tuple of four things is returned: (args, varargs, varkw, defaults).
    'args' is a list of the argument names (it may contain nested lists).
    'varargs' and 'varkw' are the names of the * and ** arguments or None.
    'defaults' is an n-tuple of the default values of the last n arguments.
What conditions would you guess might cause getargspec's args list to contain nested lists?

Comments

Anonymous said…
That's pretty neat -- and begging for some abuse ;)
11:22 PM
Anonymous said…
I find it mainly useful for documenting function structure:

def parse_email(email_tuple):
...

def parse_email((header, body)):
...

The main gain here is not so much in documenting how many elements an email_tuple has, but what order they come in - this is particularly useful if you're the kind of programmer (like I am) who throws around a lot of tuples.
6:39 AM
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