So I am trying to understand partial
:
import functools
def f(x,y) :
print x+y
g0 = functools.partial( f, 3 )
g0(1)
4 # Works as expected
In:
g1 = functools.partial( f, y=3 )
g1(1)
4 # Works as expected
In:
g2 = functools.partial( f, x=3 )
g2(1)
TypeError: f() got multiple values for keyword argument 'x'
The TypeError
disappears if I use y
as a keyword argument:
In:
g2( y=1 )
4
What causes the TypeError
?
This has nothing to do with functools.partial
, really. You are essentially calling your function like this:
f(1, x=3)
Python first fulfils the positional arguments, and your first argument is x
. Then the keyword arguments are applied, and you again supplied x
.
functools.partial()
has no means to detect that you already supplied the first positional argument as a keyword argument instead. It will not augment your call by replacing the positional argument with a y=
keyword argument.
When mixing positional and keyword arguments, you must take care not to use the same argument twice.
To expand on @Martijn-Pieters answer, this is how you can preserve the positional nature of the second parameter. Here, the argument to g2 is passed positionally as y:
def f(x,y) :
print x+y
g2 = functools.partial( f, *[3] )
g2(1)
That works when we're trying to replace an initial set of the arguments of f. I don't know how to use partial
to replace e.g. just the second argument of a 3-parameter function, and allow the first and third to be passed positionally.
But you could do that with a lambda expression.