When testing Python parameter list with a single argument, I found some weird behavior with print
.
>>> def hi(*x):
... print(x)
...
>>> hi()
()
>>> hi(1,2)
(1, 2)
>>> hi(1)
(1,)
Could any one explain to me what the last comma mean in hi(1)
's result (i.e. (1,)
)
Actually the behavior is only a little bit "weird." :-)
Your parameter x
is prefixed with a star, which means all the arguments you pass to the function will be "rolled up" into a single tuple, and x
will be that tuple.
The value (1,)
is the way Python writes a tuple of one value, to contrast it with (1)
, which would be the number 1.
Here is a more general case:
def f(x, *y):return "x is {} and y is {}".format(x, y)
Here are some runs:
>>> f(1)
'x is 1 and y is ()'
>>> f(1, 2)
'x is 1 and y is (2,)'
>>> f(1, 2, 3)
'x is 1 and y is (2, 3)'
>>> f(1, 2, 3, 4)
'x is 1 and y is (2, 3, 4)'
Notice how the first argument goes to x
and all subsequent arguments are packed into the tuple y
. You might just have found the way Python represents tuples with 0 or 1 components a little weird, but it makes sense when you realize that (1)
has to be a number and so there has to be some way to represent a single-element tuple. Python just uses the trailing comma as a convention, that's all.