Recognizing Unsuitable Default Data Types

00:00 Data Types That Shouldn’t Be Used as Default Arguments. You’ve used integers and strings as default values in the examples seen previously, and None is another common default value.

00:13 These are not the only data types you can use as default values. However, not all types should be used. In this section, you’ll see why mutable data types should not be used as default values in function definitions.

00:28 A mutable object is one whose values can be changed, such as a list or dictionary. You can find out more about mutable and immutable data types in this Real Python course.

00:42 You can add the dictionary containing the item names and quantities as an input parameter to the function you defined earlier. You can start by making all arguments required.

01:03 You can now pass shopping_list to the function when you call it. This makes the function more self-contained, as it doesn’t rely on a variable called shopping_list to exist in the scope that’s calling the function. This change also makes the function more flexible, as you can use it with different input dictionaries.

01:21 You’ve also added the return statement to return this modified dictionary. This line is technically not required at this stage, as dictionaries are a mutable data type, and therefore the function will change the state of the dictionary that exists in the main module. However, you’ll need the return statement later when you make this argument optional, so it’s best to include it now. To call the function, you’ll need to assign the data returned by the function to a variable.

01:51 You can also add a shopping_list parameter to show_list(), the first function you defined in this course. You can now have several shopping lists in your program and use the same functions to add items and display these shopping lists.

02:18 There are three items added to the hardware store list

02:39 and two added to the supermarket list.

02:57 When you run the code, you should see the output as seen on-screen.

03:05 The list of items to buy from the hardware store is shown first. The second part of the output shows the items needed from the supermarket. You’ll now add a default value for the parameter shopping_list in add_item() so that if no dictionary is passed to the function, then an empty dictionary is used.

03:24 The most tempting option is to make the default value an empty dictionary ({}). And you’ll see why this isn’t a good idea soon, but you can try it for now.

03:46 When you run this script, you’ll get the output seen on-screen, showing the items needed from the clothes shop, which may give the impression that this code works as intended. However, this code has a serious flaw that can lead to unexpected and incorrect results.

04:02 You can add a new shopping list for items needed from the electronics store by using add_item() with no argument corresponding to shopping_list.

04:15 This leads to the default value being used, which you’d hope would create a newly empty dictionary. You can see the problem on-screen where you see the output from this code.

04:27 Both shopping lists are identical even though you assigned the output from add_item() to different variables each time you called the function.

04:36 This problem happens because dictionaries are a mutable data type. You assigned an empty dictionary as the default value for the parameter shopping_list when you defined the function. The first time you call the function, this dictionary is empty. However, as dictionaries are a mutable type, when you assign values to the dictionary, the default dictionary is no longer empty. When you call the function the second time, and the default value for shopping_list is required again, the default dictionary is no longer empty, as it was populated the first time you called the function. Since you’re calling the same function, you’re using the same default dictionary that’s stored in memory.

05:16 This behavior doesn’t happen with immutable data types. The solution to this problem is to use another default value, such as None, and then create an empty dictionary within the function when no optional argument is passed.

05:43 You can check whether a dictionary has been passed as an argument using the if statement. You shouldn’t rely on the falsy nature of None, but instead explicitly check that the argument is None. Relying on the fact that None will be treated as a false value can cause problems if another argument that is falsy is passed. Now, when you run your script again, you’ll get the correct output since a new dictionary is created each time you use the function with the default value for shopping_list.

06:14 The takeaway from this is that you should always avoid using a mutable data type as a default value when defining a function with optional parameters. In the next section of the course, you’ll take a look at error messages related to input arguments.