Why use **kwargs in python? What are some real world advantages over using named arguments?

Question

I come from a background in static languages. Can someone explain (ideally through example) the real world advantages of using **kwargs over named arguments

Answer 1

**kwargs are good if you don't know in advance the name of the parameters. For example the dict constructor uses them to initialize the keys of the new dictionary.

dict(**kwargs) -> new dictionary initialized with the name=value pairs
    in the keyword argument list.  For example:  dict(one=1, two=2)

In [3]: dict(one=1, two=2)
Out[3]: {'one': 1, 'two': 2}

Answer 2

Another reason you might want to use **kwargs (and *args) is if you're extending an existing method in a subclass. You want to pass all the existing arguments onto the superclass's method, but want to ensure that your class keeps working even if the signature changes in a future version:

class MySubclass(Superclass):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.myvalue = kwargs.pop('myvalue', None)
        super(MySubclass, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)