There is one last language feature where the distinction is important. Consider the following function:

def foo(*positional, **keywords):
    print "Positional:", positional
    print "Keywords:", keywords

The *positional argument will store all of the positional arguments passed to foo(), with no limit to how many you can provide.

>>> foo('one', 'two', 'three')
Positional: ('one', 'two', 'three')
Keywords: {}

The **keywords argument will store any keyword arguments:

>>> foo(a='one', b='two', c='three')
Positional: ()
Keywords: {'a': 'one', 'c': 'three', 'b': 'two'}

And of course, you can use both at the same time:

>>> foo('one','two',c='three',d='four')
Positional: ('one', 'two')
Keywords: {'c': 'three', 'd': 'four'}

These features are rarely used, but occasionally they are very useful, and it's important to know which arguments are positional or keywords.

Using keyword arguments is the same thing as normal arguments except order doesn't matter. For example the two functions calls below are the same:

def foo(bar, baz):
    pass

foo(1, 2)
foo(baz=2, bar=1)

Positional Arguments

They have no keywords before them. The order is important!

func(1,2,3, "foo")

Keyword Arguments

They have keywords in the front. They can be in any order!

func(foo="bar", baz=5, hello=123)

func(baz=5, foo="bar", hello=123)

You should also know that if you use default arguments and neglect to insert the keywords, then the order will then matter!

def func(foo=1, baz=2, hello=3): ...
func("bar", 5, 123)

There are two ways to assign argument values to function parameters, both are used.

1. By Position. Positional arguments do not have keywords and are assigned first.

2. By Keyword. Keyword arguments have keywords and are assigned second, after positional arguments.

Note that you have the option to use positional arguments.

If you don't use positional arguments, then -- yes -- everything you wrote turns out to be a keyword argument.

When you call a function you make a decision to use position or keyword or a mixture. You can choose to do all keywords if you want. Some of us do not make this choice and use positional arguments.