This seems to be a very common idea to make python better, as I suggested something essentially the same here: Syntactic sugar to encourage use of named arguments
Only minor caveat was that I propose making the syntax more consistent with python’s long-standing *args and **kwargs syntax (established pythonic style), i.e.
my_function(=my_first_variable, =my_second_variable, =my_third_variable)
I listed the benefits as:
- Encourages use of named variables, thereby increasing readability (explicit is better than implicit) and reducing bugs from argument transposition
- Reduces verbosity (readability counts)
- Encourages authors to use the same variable name when calling a function as the argument (increases consistency of variable names used, thereby increasing readability)
- Reminiscent of python’s long-standing
*argsand**kwargssyntax (established pythonic style) - Reminiscent of python’s existing f-string debug
f'{var=}'syntax (established pythonic style) and with a very similar function - This should be relatively easy to implement as it is simple syntactic sugar (if the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea)
- Backwards compatibility: this change is fully backwards compatible since the proposed syntax would raise a syntax error in current python versions
I think some confusion may be caused by the OP’s suggestion to automatically expand arguments without any change in syntax. I’d oppose that for the reasons as listed, but I think these issues are entirely ameliorated by the proposed = syntax:
- the changes are entirely local at the call site
f(=a)is immediately expanded intof(a=a) - there is no confusion about how to match variables to arguments (at least, none more than existing function call syntax)
- it does not require looking at the function called