Input parameters
At the beginning of this chapter, we saw that a function can take input parameters. Before we delve into all the possible types of parameters, let us make sure you have a clear understanding of what passing an argument to a function means. There are three key points to keep in mind:
- Argument-passing is nothing more than assigning an object to a local variable name
- Assigning an object to an argument name inside a function does not affect the caller
- Changing a mutable object argument in a function does affect the caller
Before we explore the topic of arguments any further, please allow us to clarify the terminology a little. According to the official Python documentation:
”Parameters are defined by the names that appear in a function definition, whereas arguments are the values actually passed to a function when calling it. Parameters define what types of arguments a function can accept.”
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