.. _too-many-positional-arguments:

too-many-positional-arguments / R0917
=====================================

**Message emitted:**

``Too many positional arguments (%s/%s)``

**Description:**

*Used when a function has too many positional arguments.*

**Problematic code:**

.. literalinclude:: /data/messages/t/too-many-positional-arguments/bad.py
   :language: python

**Correct code:**

.. literalinclude:: /data/messages/t/too-many-positional-arguments/good.py
   :language: python

**Configuration file:**

.. literalinclude:: /data/messages/t/too-many-positional-arguments/pylintrc
    :language: ini

**Additional details:**

Positional arguments work well for cases where the the use cases are
self-evident, such as unittest's ``assertEqual(first, second, msg=None)``.
Comprehensibility suffers beyond a handful of arguments, though, so for
functions that take more inputs, require that additional arguments be
passed by *keyword only* by preceding them with ``*``:

.. code-block:: python

    def make_noise(self, volume, *, color=noise.PINK, debug=True):
        ...

**Related links:**

- `Ruff discussion <https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff/issues/8946>`_
- `Pylint issue <https://github.com/pylint-dev/pylint/issues/9099>`_


Created by the `design <https://github.com/pylint-dev/pylint/blob/main/pylint/checkers/design_analysis.py>`__ checker.