unpack return function arguments with *args

Question

Looking for some guidance on how I can properly unpack return arguments in other functions using *args? This is the code;

 #!/usr/bin/python

def func1():

    test1 = 'hello'
    test2 = 'hey'

    return test1, test2


def func2(*args):

    print args[0]
    print args[1]

func2(func1)

The error message I'm getting;

    <function func1 at 0x7fde3229a938>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "args_test.py", line 19, in <module>
    func2(func1)
  File "args_test.py", line 17, in func2
    print args[1]
IndexError: tuple index out of range

I've tried a few things like args() but with no success. What am I doing wrong when trying to unpack?

Answer 1

You didn't call func , so your func2 is actually getting a single argument, which is a function object. Change your code to: func2(*func1())

# While you're at it, also unpack the results so hello and hey are interpreted as 2 separate string arguments, and not a single tuple argument 
>>> func2(*func1())
hello
hey

>>> func2(func1)
<function func1 at 0x11548AF0>

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#29>", line 1, in <module>
    func2(func1)
  File "<pyshell#19>", line 4, in func2
    print args[1]
IndexError: tuple index out of range

For reference:

>>> func1
<function func1 at 0x11548AF0>
>>> func1()
('hello', 'hey')
>>> 

Answer 2

func2 takes multiple arguments and you specified only one in your code
You can easily see if by printing all the args . You can also see, that it fails to print args[1] not args[0] , because you have passed one argument to that function.