Python Programming On Win32

Keyword Arguments

Both Python and Excel support keyword arguments. These are generally used when you have a long list of possible arguments to a function, most of which have default values. Excel takes this to extremes; for example, the function to save a workbook is:

WorkBook.SaveAs(Filename, FileFormat, Password, WriteResPassword, ReadOnlyRecommended, 
CreateBackup, AddToMru, TextCodePage, TextVisualLayout)

And that’s a short one: some of the formatting commands have literally dozens of arguments. To call these, you supply only the arguments you want, as follows:

>>> xlBook.SaveAs(Filename='C:\\temp\\mysheet.xls')
>>>

The capitalization of the keywords must be exactly right. Microsoft generally uses mixed case for everything but Filename, but you’ll undoubtedly have a fun time discovering more exceptions.