I have the following function:
def foo(a, b, c):
print "Hello"
Let's say I know it exists, and I know it takes three parameters named a, b and c, but I don't know in which order.
I want to be able to call foo given a dictionary like:
args = { "a": 1, "b" : 17, "c": 23 }
Is there a way to find out in which order the parameters are to be passed?
You don't need to; let Python figure that out for you:
foo(**args)
This applies your dictionary as keyword arguments, which is perfectly legal. You can use the arguments to foo() in any order when you use keyword arguments:
>>> def foo(a, b, c):
... print a, b, c
...
>>> foo(c=3, a=5, b=42)
5 42 3
>>> args = {'a': 1, 'b' : 17, 'c': 23}
>>> foo(**args)
1 17 23
You can still figure out the exact order, using the inspect.getargspec() function:
>>> import inspect
>>> inspect.getargspec(foo)
ArgSpec(args=['a', 'b', 'c'], varargs=None, keywords=None, defaults=None)
But why have a dog and bark yourself?
