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*args and **kwargs in python explained

Hi there folks. I have come to see that most new python programmers have a hard time figuring out the *args and **kwargs magic variables. So what are they ? First of all let me tell you that it is not necessary to write *args or **kwargs. Only the * (aesteric) is necessary. You could have also written *var and **vars. Writing *args and **kwargs is just a convention. So now lets take a look at *args first.

Usage of *args
*args and **kwargs are mostly used in function definitions. *args and **kwargs allow you to pass a variable number of arguments to a function. What does variable mean here is that you do not know before hand that how many arguments can be passed to your function by the user so in this case you use these two keywords. *args is used to send a non-keyworded variable length argument list to the function. Here’s an example to help you get a clear idea:

def test_var_args(f_arg, *argv):
    print "first normal arg:", f_arg
    for arg in argv:
        print "another arg through *argv :", arg


This produces the following result:

first normal arg: yasoob
another arg through *argv : python
another arg through *argv : eggs
another arg through *argv : test

I hope this cleared away any confusion that you had. So now lets talk about **kwargs

Usage of **kwargs
**kwargs allows you to pass keyworded variable length of arguments to a function. You should use **kwargs if you want to handle named arguments in a function. Here is an example to get you going with it:

def greet_me(**kwargs):
    if kwargs is not None:
        for key, value in kwargs.iteritems():
            print "%s == %s" %(key,value)
>>> greet_me(name="yasoob")
name == yasoob

So can you see how we handled a keyworded argument list in our function. This is just the basics of **kwargs and you can see how useful it is. Now lets talk about how you can use *args and **kwargs to call a function with a list or dictionary of arguments.

Using *args and **kwargs to call a function
So here we will see how to call a function using *args and **kwargs. Just consider that you have this little function:

def test_args_kwargs(arg1, arg2, arg3):
    print "arg1:", arg1
    print "arg2:", arg2
    print "arg3:", arg3

Now you can use *args or **kwargs to pass arguments to this little function. Here’s how to do it:

# first with *args
>>> args = ("two", 3,5)
>>> test_args_kwargs(*args)
arg1: two
arg2: 3
arg3: 5

# now with **kwargs:
>>> kwargs = {"arg3": 3, "arg2": "two","arg1":5}
>>> test_args_kwargs(**kwargs)
arg1: 5
arg2: two
arg3: 3

Order of using *args **kwargs and formal args
So if you want to use all three of these in functions then the order is


I hope you have understood the usage of *args and **kwargs. If you have got any problems or confusions with this then feel free to comment below. For further study i suggest the official python docs on defining functions and *args and **kwargs on stackoverflow.

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*) Making a url shortener in python
*) 20 Python libraries you can’t live without
*) Targeting python 2 and 3 at the same time.


54 thoughts on “*args and **kwargs in python explained

  1. Saw your links to this in the python programmers group on fb. I have been coding for a while now, but didn’t know anything about this. your blog is really really helpful! Thank’s for posting this, and keep the fb group updated with your posts!

    • Thanx i am glad that you found this helpful. If you want regular updates then consider following this blog. The link for following is available in the menu.

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  8. Per says:

    Hi im trying to use a fill_between command but i dont know what to put in the **kwargs “section”.

    This is my coding:


    fill_between(x, y1, y2=0, where=None, **kwargs)

    What should i write in the kwargs** section?

    Greetings from Norway.

    • Hi Per. Welcome to my blog. Now regarding your problem I am sorry that I am not able to clearly understand you. What you can do is that you can write a detailed email to me or use stackoverflow🙂 In both cases you will get help.

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  10. Juan Sierra Pons says:

    Quick and easy.
    Still learning python from a book and I didn’t find anything on it reletated to to *args
    and *kwargs
    Thanks for sharing your knowlegde and time.

  11. hi really it’s I needed, I searched a lot finally I found and I understand *args and **kwargs. can you please in the same way explain django views modesls program and urls patterens mapping.thank you very much.

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  13. parkerandhobbes says:

    Thank you! It’s the best explanation I’ve read but I don’t really see the point in them.

    In PHP we just pass variables onto functions. A variable can be well… anything. A number, a string, an array or even a multidimensional array – can all be handled by just saying:

    function hello($some_variable) {
    //do some stuff

    In PHP the function doesn’t really care what gets passed to it. Whether you through into the function, PHP will deal with it. So, if PHP is able to live quite happily without args and kwargs, how come Python seems to have a problem here?

    This is not a loaded question. It’s a sincere question from a dude who is trying to learn. Perhaps I’m missing something.

    Many thanks,


    • Mahan Marwat says:

      Python is dynamically typed language.
      Python functions really doesn’t care about what you pass to them.
      But you got it the wrong way… please re-read the post.
      If you want to pass one thousand arguments to your function, then you can’t explicitly define every parameter in your function definition. For the reason you will use *args and your function will be automagically able to handle all the arguments you pass to them for you.

  14. Sumer Sadawarti says:

    Awesome…. doubt cleared… thanks a lot..🙂

    Notice one thing: **kwargs arrange keys in alphabetical order

    def print_it(f_arg, **kwargs):
    print f_arg
    for key,value in kwargs.iteritems():
    print “%s=%s”%(key,value)




    ‘age’ gets printed before ‘name’

    once again….this post helped me a lot…. thanks dude.

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  17. Falon says:

    For Python3 now please note a difference:
    in the first example for usage of **kwargs the line that has this:
    for key, value in kwargs.iteritems():

    gave me an error because it needs to be:
    for key, value in kwargs.items():

    since iteritems() no longer is defined in Python3 because items() can do the same thing.

  18. In the second paragraph, you’ve said:

    “*args is used to send a non-keyworded variable length argument list to the function”.

    As far as I understand, what you’re passing is any number of non-keyworded arguments in the function call. But NOT in a list. Am I wrong?

    Thanks for the article : )

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  20. alnauto says:

    That was a short but insightful explanation. Thank you very much, I’m sure I can make good use of *args and *kwargs in my future coding!

  21. Edd says:

    Well, this was quite nice. now I know how to use *args and **kwargs correctly. If’s easier thant what I thought before. Thank you for the tips.

  22. Jay says:

    When using **kwargs, we call those ‘keyword’ arguments.
    But in Python, I thought ‘keyword’ referred to Python keywords like ‘if’, ‘else’, ‘while’, ‘for’, etc.
    I’m guessing the term ‘keyword’ means two completely different things depending on the context (Python language keywords vs. keyword arguments) but I wasn’t sure, can someone clarify?

  23. Aditya says:

    I have one doubt on kwarg.pop(). What is the use of this method? I am bit confused on this. Can you please explain it to me?

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