what's this python syntax dict(name=name)?

Question

I've encounter this syntax in the srapy documentation .

>>> abc = ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> dict(abc=abc)
{'abc': ['a', 'b', 'c']}

There doesn't seem to have this syntax mentioned in the python dict documentation . What is this syntax called?

Answer 1

This use keyword arguments .

It is roughly the same as:

def make_dict(**kwargs):
    return kwargs

In your case,

abc = ['a', 'b', 'c']
dict(abc=abc)

means:

dict(abc=['a', 'b', 'c'])

which is the same as:

{'abc': ['a', 'b', 'c']}

Answer 2

There is nothing special, dict() can take keyword arguments as well as positional arguments. You can read the docs on dict() .

So in your code snippet dict() just take single keyword argument.