At the end of his last post, Steve Bethard wrote:
> That said, I find that in most cases, the better option is to use
*args
> in the original function though. For example:
>
> def f(arg):
> args = aslist(arg)
> ...
> f(42)
> f(['spam', 'eggs', 'ham'])
>
> could probably be more easily written as:
>
> def f(*args):
> ...
> f(42)
> f('spam', 'eggs', 'ham')
>
> Of course this won't work if you have multiple list arguments.
Very interesting, but it also doesn't let you specify a default
argument value...however this gave me the idea that it would be
possible to use the *args idea to greatly simplify the proposed
aslist() function -- when one was needed to allow default argument
values and/or for handling multiple list arguments. Namely:
def aslist(*args):
return list(args)
def f(arg=None):
args = aslist(arg)
...
f()
f(42)
f('tanstaafl')
f(['spam', 'eggs', 'ham'])
This seems fairly lean and mean, with no if, isinstance, hasattr, or
try/excepts required -- although aslist() might need a check for the
single argument of None case, depending on whether it should return []
or something besides [None] in that situation.
Best,
Martin
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