python keyword arguments with hyphen

Question

I have a keyword argument function:

def f1(**kw):
    for key,val in kw.iteritems():
        print "key=%s val=%s" % (key,val)

f1(Attr1 = "Val1", Attr2 = "Val2")  # works fine.

f1(Attr1-SubAttr = "Val1", Attr2 = "Val2")  # complains about keyword being an expression.

f1("Attr1-SubAttr" = "Val1", Attr2 = "Val2")  # doesn't work either.

How do I pass in keywords with a hyphen? I don't have control over these keywords since I am parsing these from an existing legacy database.

Thanks! -kumar

Answer 1

Keyword arguments must be valid Python identifiers; these don't allow for - as that's reserved for subtraction.

You can pass in arbitrary strings using the **kwargs variable keyword argument syntax instead:

f1(**{"Attr1-SubAttr": "Val1", "Attr2": "Val2"})