Mutually Exclusive Arguments

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Are you ready for some Python fun? Let’s talk about mutually exclusive arguments those optional parameters with default values that can make our code more efficient and easier to read. These arguments cannot have overlapping values because they are designed to work together in a specific way. For example, let’s say we have a function called `print_message` that takes two optional parameters: color and font size. The default value for the color is “black” and the default font size is 12. If you don’t specify either of these arguments when calling the function, it will print your message in black with a font size of 12. But what if we want to change that? Well, we can do so by specifying one or both of those parameters! For example:

# This function takes in a message and two optional parameters: color and font size
def print_message(message, color="black", font_size=12):
    # If no color is specified, the default color is black
    # If no font size is specified, the default font size is 12
    # The message is printed in the specified color and font size
    print(message, color=color, font_size=font_size)

# Prints "Hello, world!" in black with a font size of 12
print_message("Hello, world!")

# Prints "" in red with a font size of 12
print_message("", color="red")

# Prints "Welcome to Python!" in black with a font size of 36
print_message("Welcome to Python!", font_size=36)

Now, here’s where the mutually exclusive part comes in. Let’s say we also have an argument called `bold`, which defaults to False. If you specify both color and font, but forget about bold, Python will throw an error because those arguments are not mutually exclusive! This is because if you set a color, it implies that the text should be bold (since most people associate bold with darker colors). So what do we do instead? We can either make sure to always include all three parameters when specifying `color` and `font`, or we can modify our function to handle this case differently. For example:

# This function takes in a text, color, font size, and bold parameter and prints the message with the specified formatting.
def print_message(text, color="black", font=12, bold=False):
    # Check if the bold parameter is True and the color is either red or green.
    if bold and (color == "red" or color == "green"):
        # If so, raise an error since bold and dark colors do not go well together.
        raise ValueError("Bold and dark colors do not go well together!")
    else:
        # If not, print the message with the specified color and font size.
        print(f"Message: {text}, Color: {color}, Font Size: {font}")
        
# Example usage:
print_message("Hello World", color="blue", font=14, bold=True)
# Output: Message: Hello World, Color: blue, Font Size: 14

In this modified function, we’re checking whether `bold` is True AND either `color` is red OR green. If that’s the case, we can handle the error however we want (in our example, we just pass over it). But if everything checks out, we print your message as usual!

They might seem like a small thing at first, but they can save us time and headaches when writing code.

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