the ability to bind the items in an Iterable to local names: a, b = 1, 2 or pass them as positional args to a function: foo(*args), and similarly, to pass Dictionary items as keyword args: foo(**kwargs). Apply the "splat" operator (*) to the parameter list, and it will work. The splat operator unpacks multiple values, and there are two types of function parameters namely *args short for arguments, and **kwargs short for keyword arguments. The following table lists all operators from highest precedence to lowest. An array value is also defined. Previous Page. The simplest example would be something like this: Another useful thing is that the splat operator can make an array into several arguments: 4.2. for Statements¶. The splat operator has almost endless uses. Next Page . Single *Splat. Spread syntax can be used when all elements from an object or array need to be included in a list of some kind. Splat combines zero or more positional arguments into a tuple, while splatty-splat combines zero or more keyword arguments into a dictionary. In this article, we discussed Python lists, showing you how to create, build and clear them. We use two operators * (for tuples) and ** (for dictionaries). In the above example, the defined function takes x, y, and z as arguments and returns the sum of these values. This seems like an ideal use case for the splat operator, so I'd like to be able to do something like this: Background Consider a situation where we have a function that receives four arguments. A simple … The for statement in Python differs a bit from what you may be used to in C or Pascal. The generally associated operator with multiplication is splat operator, but in Python it doubles as the splat operator. Python Operators Precedence Example. If we simply pass list to the function, the call doesn’t work. We want to make call to this function and we have a list of size 4 with us that has all arguments for the function. Whatever you call it, a few wonderfully useful features in Python are. Here's an example: >>> def sum(a,b,c):... print a+b+c... >>> sum(1,2,3) 6 … It's not an operator as such, so it doesn't really have a name, but it is defined as a "syntactic rule".So it should be called: "the keyword argument unpacking syntax" If you have a list of arguments, *args, it's called "argument unpacking", in the same manner **kwargs is called "keyword argument unpacking". Expanding, Unpacking, or ... Splatting? In this case, the code uses the join() method to join the newline character with each member of Colors. I have a large (~10 elements) list of integers that I wish to interpolate into a string. python: "splat" operator * to unpack a list to use it as method parameters I had a long list of parameters to be re-used in different methods. ... Python provides more than one way to perform any task. The generally associated operator with multiplication is splat operator, but in Python it doubles as the splat operator. But the main idea is that whenever you don’t want to specify the number of arguments you have, you would use a splat operator. Advertisements. Operator Description ** Exponentiation (raise to the power) ~ + - Complement, unary plus and minus (method names for the last two are +@ and -@) * / % // Learning how to use Python’s various data types is part of every programmer’s journey to mastering the language. Using the splat operator can make your code significantly smaller. Type the following code into the notebook and click Run Cell. def add (*a) : return sum(a) >>> add( 1 , 2 , 3 ) 6 We briefly went over some useful list methods before turning to the splat operator.