favorite_food challenge, not sure how unpacking works

Question

Below code seems to work but I am unsure as to what is happening when ** dict is passed as an argument in the format string. From this I assume the function is called with values for "name" and "food". Could someone possibly step through what is happening when the  function called.
Thanks
```stringfactory.py
def favoritefood(dict):
    return "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".format(**dict)
```

Chris Freeman · Accepted Answer

Under argument in the glossary (https://docs.python.org/3/glossary.html#term-argument) it says:
A value passed to a function (or method) when calling the function. There are two kinds of argument:
keyword argument: an argument preceded by an identifier (e.g. name=) in a function call or passed as a value in a dictionary preceded by **. For example, 3 and 5 are both keyword arguments in the following calls to complex():
Python
complex(real=3, imag=5)
complex(**{'real': 3, 'imag': 5})

positional argument: an argument that is not a keyword argument. Positional arguments can appear at the beginning of an argument list and/or be passed as elements of an iterable preceded by *. For example, 3 and 5 are both positional arguments in the following calls:
Python 
complex(3, 5)
complex(*(3, 5))

So when a **dict is declared as a parameter, any dict passed in will be converted to key1=value1, key2=value2,....
Pro tip: don’t use built in type names such as dict, str, list, etc as parameter names. It can cause bad side effects. 
Post back if you need more help. Good luck!!!

eestsaid · Answer

Super. Thanks Chris. I understand your reponse.

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favorite_food challenge, not sure how unpacking works

2 Answers

Chris Freeman

Chris Freeman

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