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How to skip the parameters of a function in python?

I am trying to skip parameters while calling a function. Could you please help me how to do this?
Example:
I have to call below function which is having 3 parameters:
send_mail(audit_df, LOG_FILE, Duration)
I have to call above function to skip 1st and 3rd parameters. How can i do this?

You can setup default values for the parameters. I don't know what works for you, so I just set them to None.
def send_mail(audit_df=None, log_file=None, duration=None):
do all the things
when calling
send_mail(log_file="myfile")
For a little light reading see the Function definitions section of the docs.

You can place "None" in place of the parameter.
This is going to make python assume that it is Nothing and will do nothing.

This can be done in two ways using
**kwargs
Optional parameters
See the answer below for details
Multiple optional arguments python

possible variables of a method on python modules

I am new to python, my question is that how we can know the arguments name of a method on a module. for example, in the smpplib module page (https://github.com/podshumok/python-smpplib) i see an example code that has a line as below
client.bind_transceiver(system_id='login', password='secret')
I what to know how i can know that bind_transceiver function has system_id password (and system_type) variable.
help (smpplib.client.Client) just give me below info about bind_transceiver
:
bind_transceiver(self, **args)
Bind as a transmitter and receiver at once

tl;dr You would have to look at the source code or documentation to find out.
Explanation: bind_transmitter uses **args. This allows the person calling the function to pass in any number of keyword arguments. For example:
bind_transmitter() # valid
bind_transmitter(a=1, b='4') # valid
bind_transmitter(myarg=1, m=6, y=7, system_id='me', password='secret') # valid
As such, there is no way to know which keyword arguments bind_transmitter will actually use without examining the source code or documentation.

Sometimes, in Python, functions have **kwargs argument that means "any key - value argument is accepted".
Key-value pairs are passed as in your example:
client.bind_transceiver(system_id='login', password='secret')
The function implementation code access the key - value pairs with the dictionary kwargs. So the internal code would do something like:
def bind_transceiver(self, **kwargs):
# Do something with system id
print(kwargs['system_id'])
# Do something with password
print(kwargs['password])
The output of your call to this function would be
login
password
You can pass any key-value pair to the function but there are only 2 ways to understand which keyes will be actually consumed.
Read the function documentation
Read the code
The keyes that are not used will be stored anyway in the dictionary args within the scope of the function but they won't have any effect.
It is also possible that the function accepts another argument like *args. This, instead of a dictionary, will be read like a tuple by the function in a similar fashion but using positional numbers as keyes.

Python: call function with default arguments that come before positional arguments

For example, I'd like to do something like: greet(,'hola'), where greet is:
def greet(person='stranger', greeting='hello')
This would help greatly for testing while writing code

Upon calling a function you can use the variable names to make it even more clear what variable will assume which value. At the same time, if defaults are provided in the function definition, skipping variables when calling the function does not raise any errors. So, in short you can just do this:
def greet(person='stranger', greeting='hello')
print('{} {}'.format(greeting, person))
return
greet(greeting='hola') # same as greet(person='stranger', greeting='hola')
# returns 'hola stranger'
Note that, as I said above this would not work if for example your function definition was like this:
def greet(person, greeting)
print('{} {}'.format(greeting, person))
return
Since in this case, Python would complain saying that it does not know what to do with person; no default is supplied..
And by the way, the problem you are describing is most likely the very reason defaults are used in the first place

Without knowing the other parameters, and only knowing that the parameter you want to change is in second position you could use the inspect module to get function signature & associated default values.
Then make a copy of the default values list and change the one at the index you want:
import inspect
def greet(person='stranger', greeting='hello'):
print(person,greeting)
argspec = inspect.getargspec(greet)
defaults = list(argspec.defaults)
defaults[1] = "hola" # change second default parameter
greet(**dict(zip(argspec.args,defaults)))
Assuming that all parameters have default values (else it shifts the lists an that fails) that prints:
stranger hola

python argparse: how to use other parsed argument as parameter at calling function in type keyword?

I am trying to create an user interface using argparse module.
One of the argument need to be converted, so I use the type keyword:
add_argument('positional', ..., type=myfunction)
and there is another optional argument:
add_argument('-s', dest='switch', ...)
in addition, I have
parsed_argument=parse_args()
However, in myfunction, I hope I can use an additional parameter to control the behavior, which is the optional argument above, i.e.
def myfunction(positional, switch=parsed_argument.switch):
...
How can I achieve that?

Simple answer: You can’t. The arguments are parsed separately, and there is no real guarantee that some order is maintained. Instead of putting your logic into the argument type, just store it as a string and do your stuff after parsing the command line:
parser.add_argument('positional')
parser.add_argument('-s', '--switch')
args = parser.parse_args()
myfunction(args.positional, switch=args.switch)

I'm not sure I did understand correctly what you want to achieve, but if what you want to do is something that looks like:
myprog.py cmd1 --switcha
myprog.py cmd2 --switchb
yes you can, you need to use subparsers. I wrote a good example of it for a little PoC I wrote to access stackoverflow's API from CLI. The whole logic is a bit long to put thoroughly here, but mainly the idea is:
create your parser using parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(...)
create the subparsers using subparsers = parser.add_subparsers(...)
add the commands with things like `subparser.add_parser('mycommand', help='Its only a command').set_defaults(func=mycmd_fn) where
mycmd_fn takes args as parameters where you have all the switches you issued to the command!
the difference from what you ask, is that you'll need one function per command, and not one function with the positional argument as first argument. But you can leverage that easily by having mycmd_fn being like: mycmd_fn = lambda *args: myfunction('mycmd', *args)
HTH

From the documentation:
type= can take any callable that takes a single string argument and returns the converted value:
Python functions like int and float are good examples of a type function should be like. int takes a string and returns a number. If it can't convert the string it raises a ValueError. Your function could do the same. argparse.ArgumentTypeError is another option. argparse isn't going to pass any optional arguments to it. Look at the code for argparse.FileType to see a more elaborate example of a custom type.
action is another place where you can customize behavior. The documentation has an example of a custom Action. Its arguments include the namespace, the object where the parser is collecting the values it will return to you. This object contains any arguments have already been set. In theory your switch value will be available there - if it occurs first.
There are many SO answers that give custom Actions.
Subparsers are another good way of customizing the handling of arguments.
Often it is better to check for the interaction of arguments after parse_args. In your case 'switch' could occur after the positional and still have effect. And argparse.Error lets you use the argparse error mechanism (e.g. displaying the usage)

Python keyword arguments

I have several layers of function calls, passing around a common dictionary of key word arguments:
def func1(**qwargs):
func2(**qwargs)
func3(**qwargs)
I would like to supply some default arguments in some of the subsequent function calls, something like this:
def func1(**qwargs):
func2(arg = qwargs.get("arg", default), **qwargs)
func3(**qwargs)
The problem with this approach is that if arg is inside qwargs, a TypeError is raised with "got multiple values for keyword argument".
I don't want to set qwargs["arg"] to default, because then func3 gets this argument without warrant. I could make a copy.copy of the qwargs and set "arg" in the copy, but qwargs could have large data structures in it and I don't want to copy them (maybe copy.copy wouldn't, only copy.deepcopy?).
What's the pythonic thing to do here?

Just build and use another dict for the purpose of calling func2, leaving the original alone for the later call to func3:
def func1(**qwargs):
d = dict(arg=default)
d.update(qwqargs)
func2(**d)
func3(**qwargs)
This is if you want a setting for arg in qwargs to override the default. Otherwise (if you want default to override any possible setting for arg in qwargs):
def func1(**qwargs):
d = dict(qwargs, arg=default)
func2(**d)
func3(**qwargs)
since the keyword-argument to dict overrides the value in the positional argument, if any.

To create a new dict with the same keys and values you can use
newdict=dict(qwargs)
If qwargs doesn't contain really many keys that's cheap.
If it's possible you could rewrite the functions to take their args really as dict instead of multiple args.