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Arguing about arguments

Rust

Here’s some Rust code:

// define a function
fn foo(x: i32, y: i32) -> i32 {
    // body elided
}

// call it
let z = foo(5, 6);

In programming language jargon, we call x and y parameters and 5 and 6 arguments.

Rust does not have many fancy features related to parameters and arguments. But other languages do. For example, here’s a function in Ruby, another language I’ve written a ton of:

# its definition in Rails
def redirect_to(options = {}, response_options = {})
  # body elided
end

# you can call it in all of these ways:

# pass a string with a URL
redirect_to "http://www.rubyonrails.org"

# pass an instance of a model to go to it, if post.id = 5 then this might go to
# "/posts/5"
redirect_to @post

# invoke an action directly, might be equivalent to the above in a Posts controller
redirect_to action: "show", id: 5

# redirect to a model's URL, passing a flash message
redirect_to post_url(@post), alert: "Watch it, mister!"

# do the same but also set a specific HTTP code
redirect_to post_url(@post), status: :found

# do both
redirect_to post_url(@post), status: 301, flash: { updated_post_id: @post.id }

I used to love Ruby, and now I love Rust. And to be honest, redirect_to and friends are a huge reason why I am so against Rust gaining these sorts of fancy features: they can be really concise, and beautiful to a certain kind of eye, but it also makes it really, really hard to know what all you can do with a function. You pretty much have to hope that someone has written good documentation, and while Rails’s documentation is pretty good, not every library is going to have it.

To be clear about it, there are several things bundled together here: flexible argument types, options hashes, defaults, and keyword-looking syntax. It’s that whole style of API that shaped my skepticism, not argument labels by themselves.

So, what exactly are all of these features?

Named parameters

The simplest one is named parameters. As you might guess, this means that we can explicitly use parameter names at the call site:

// without named parameters
let z = foo(5, 6);

// if Rust had them
let z = foo(x: 5, y: 6);

Named parameters are nice because they can give you more information at the call site, but also they can be more flexible. Some languages also let you supply named arguments in a different order:

// since we have names, we can write this:
let z = foo(x: 5, y: 6);

// but we can also write this:
let z = foo(y: 6, x: 5);

The downside of named parameters is that they can get quite verbose:

# FastAPI in Python, UserOut class not shown
@app.get(
    "/me", 
    response_model=UserOut, 
    status_code=200, 
    tags=["Users"],
    summary="Get current user profile"
)
def get_current_user():

I tried to not strawman this by showing an extreme example, but get can take 23 different keyword arguments, and so this could get quite, quite long.

Named arguments can be good when passing expressions, so we can understand something more at the call site. In the above, status_code=200 is much nicer than a bare 200, if you know HTTP well it’s kind of obvious what it is, but the additional clarity is nice. But it can be common to break truly complex examples down into variables that we end up forwarding to the function, and then it becomes verbose and redundant. As an example from inside FastAPI where get is invoked directly with all of those options:

self.router.get(
    path,
    response_model=response_model,
    status_code=status_code,
    tags=tags,
    dependencies=dependencies,
    summary=summary,
    description=description,
    response_description=response_description,
    responses=responses,
    deprecated=deprecated,
    operation_id=operation_id,
    response_model_include=response_model_include,
    response_model_exclude=response_model_exclude,
    response_model_by_alias=response_model_by_alias,
    response_model_exclude_unset=response_model_exclude_unset,
    response_model_exclude_defaults=response_model_exclude_defaults,
    response_model_exclude_none=response_model_exclude_none,
    include_in_schema=include_in_schema,
    response_class=response_class,
    name=name,
    callbacks=callbacks,
    openapi_extra=openapi_extra,
    generate_unique_id_function=generate_unique_id_function,
)

We actually snuck in another two features into this example: how did we only pass five arguments into a function that has 23 parameters?

Optional and/or Default arguments

As the name implies, optional arguments is a feature where you can choose to not pass in an argument, and default arguments lets you set a default when an argument is not passed.

To go back to that example:

@app.get(
    "/me", 
    response_model=UserOut, 
    status_code=200, 
    tags=["Users"],
    summary="Get current user profile"
)
def get_current_user():

We only passed in five of the 22 possible arguments. If we had to pass all 22 every time, that would be extremely verbose. So by declaring defaults for some parameters, we can leave them off of the call site, and not pass arguments for them, and get the defaults instead. We saw this in the Ruby:

# its definition in Rails
def redirect_to(options = {}, response_options = {})

The = {} are defaults for options and response_options: they’re an empty hash map.

You’ll often find optional and default arguments come together: after all, if you don’t pass an argument in, what should the value of that parameter be? If your language has some sort of null value, that can be one solution, and it can feel like optional arguments without default arguments.

But you can truly get one without the other with our next feature, function overloading:

Function Overloading

Languages that support function overloading allow you to define multiple functions with the same name, but different signatures. Which function gets invoked depends on which arguments you pass. This lets us truly have optional arguments without default arguments. In Java:

// Version 1: Requires both arguments
void connect(String url, int timeout) { ... }

// Version 2: Timeout is optional to the caller, and handled internally
void connect(String url) {  ... }

Here, if you pass in a timeout, you get the first function, and if you don’t, you get the second. Instead of null, the parameter just doesn’t exist at all.

This is a specific form of something called “function dispatch,” which basically means “hey when a function is invoked, what exactly gets called?” There are a lot of different ways to do this, and I don’t want this post to get into all of that right now, but there is a multitude of possibilities here: static vs dynamic, single vs multiple, predicate dispatch, pattern matching dispatch, prototype based dispatch… maybe I’ll write a post about that someday too.

So, what are the pros and cons here?

These features make me uneasy

As I said above, Rust doesn’t support any of these three features right now. And they have been a persistent request from the community for years. Here is a 12 year old GitHub issue about this support, and it even includes something we didn’t talk about, “variable arity argument lists.”

That gets me to the first thing that I don’t like about these features: there are a lot of them. And they are all intertwined. As we mentioned before, if you have optional arguments, you probably want default arguments. If you have named parameters, do you want to support only named parameters, or do you want to support both? It’s so tempting to just support all of them, and then you’ve added a huge mountain of complexity.

In Rust right now, you have to write multiple functions with slightly different names:

// a new empty vector
let v = Vec::new();

// one with a set capacity
let v = Vec::with_capacity(5);

For the simple cost of “write two different names for your functions,” you get to keep the rules very simple: there is one function definition, and you invoke it by name. Done. Would it be nice to be able to say all of these:

let v = Vec::new();
let v = Vec::new(5);
let v = Vec::new(capacity: 5);

Sure, maybe. But the cost feels very, very high to me. If you’re used to these features, maybe it doesn’t seem that high, but I have a Ruby tattoo on my body. I’ve seen some shit. And so I’ve grown to enjoy Rust’s simplicity in this area. Yes, if you have a function with tons of parameters, you may need to write a builder instead, and that comes with its own form of verbosity:

// if Vec had a builder
let v = Vec::new()
    .with_capacity(5)
    .build();

// all of the code you have to write to make the builder elided

But the language itself stays simple, and the rules are easy. For a language that’s already perceived as complex, this has always felt right to me. And that’s why I’ve pushed back against the various proposals to extend Rust in this way all of these years.

But recently, I changed my opinion on one of these features, and one alone, and I would consider it okay if Rust gained them. Maybe. Also, it’s important to note that I haven’t worked on Rust in years, and so my opinions are kind of irrelevant, but whatever: it’s my blog, this is what opinions are for.

I’m okay with named parameters now

I think Rust could be okay with named parameters, but not optional or default ones. And what changed my opinion is coding agents, actually. I’m sorry, maybe you’re sick of me talking about AI, but hear me out.

One of my beefs with named parameters, as mentioned above, is verbosity. But what you gain for that verbosity is clarity. I don’t think that verbosity and clarity are always the same thing; I like {} rather than do/end, and find it more readable, personally. But let’s take this function from the image crate:

// definition
pub fn crop_imm<I: GenericImageView>(
    image: &I,
    x: u32,
    y: u32,
    width: u32,
    height: u32,
) -> SubImage<&I> { ... }

// calling it
let cropped = image::imageops::crop_imm(&img, 10, 20, 200, 100);

// if we had named arguments
let cropped = image::imageops::crop_imm(
    image: &img,
    x: 10,
    y: 20,
    width: 200,
    height: 100,
);

This does really increase readability, no question about it. But for me, typing all of that out just isn’t really super worth the squeeze. But when Claude is gonna write it? I care a lot less. And the readability advantage for humans is even stronger for agents: the extra clarity of the text inline seems to (I haven’t run real evals on this yet…) be more helpful and use less tokens and calls when looking at the actual call site. If an agent were reading that named example above, it could tell that 10 is the x value without having to go look up the function signature itself. “What’s good for humans is true for agents” strikes again.

This is also why I’m still against optional arguments: they deliberately hide what is being passed in to the function, and obscure clarity at the call site. What’s nice about them is that you have to type less. But I’m not typing myself anymore. So the benefit just isn’t there, but the drawbacks are. This also doesn’t solve the verbosity side of passing foo=foo in our FastAPI example, it is still redundant. But one part of the downsides have been ameliorated.

Notably, all of this reasoning also applies to the builder pattern, and it’s why I try to use builders sparingly in Rust. It can emulate named arguments, which is good, but it can also emulate optional/default/variable arguments, which is bad. The juice is worth the squeeze sometimes, but not all the time, and probably not even the majority of the time.

So we’ve ameliorated the largest downside, but get to keep the largest upside. That seems good. But even if we like the feature, there are still lots of practical concerns with Rust specifically that make it not a slam-dunk to add them to the language.

There’s tons of practical issues though

Now, “is this feature good in the abstract” is very different from “should this feature” be implemented? There are a lot of open questions and drawbacks to implementing named parameters. A simple one is that you don’t get rid of all of those previous functions, with_capacity will exist forever. That’s a relatively minor downside to some of the harder problems.

First, strictly speaking Rust parameters aren’t names, they’re patterns. A name is a simple pattern, but you can get more complex:

fn foo((x, y): (i32, i32)) {

This parameter doesn’t have a name, it’s a pattern that introduces two bindings. You could come up with some syntax that gives things external names vs internal names, but there’s that complexity revealing its head again.

What happens when functions become values? I can write this today:

fn resize(width: u32, height: u32) {
    // body elided
}

fn offset(dx: u32, dy: u32) {
    // body elided
}

let f: fn(u32, u32) = if resizing { resize } else { offset };

What name do we use for f’s parameters? They can be named different things. Does this become an error? What names can you use when invoking f? Making this more complicated, Rust actually will accept this code right now:

type Callback = fn(width: u32, height: u32);

fn f(g: Callback) {}

fn bar(x: u32, y: u32) {}

fn main() {
    f(bar) ;
}

The names in Callback are just documentation, as you can see they’re not required. Does this become an error? Do we require bar to change its names? The same goes for trait definitions, actually:

trait Writer {
    fn write(&mut self, data: &[u8]);
}

struct Sink;

impl Writer for Sink {
    fn write(&mut self, bytes: &[u8]) {
        // body elided
    }
}

Is this an error? Is it okay?

Here’s another problem: evaluation order.

fn consume(data: Vec<u8>, length: usize) {
    // body elided
}

Right now, Rust always evaluates parameters from left to right at the call site. So if we use the named version:

fn consume(data: Vec<u8>, length: usize) {
    // body elided
}

fn consume2(length: usize, data: Vec<u8>) {
    // body elided
}

fn main() {
    let data = vec![1, 2, 3];

    // this is an error, borrow after move
    consume(data, data.len());
    // this is okay
    consume2(data.len(), data);

    // does this compile or not?
    consume(length: data.len(), data: data);
}

If we keep left to right evaluation order according to the definition, but let you use named values in any order, suddenly some orders at the call site compile and some orders do not. Do we change evaluation order to do whatever compiles? That feels very dangerous and confusing.

Rust does let you do this with struct fields:

struct Args {
    data: Vec<u8>,
    length: usize,
}

fn main() {
    let data = vec![1, 2, 3];
    
    // works
    let args = Args {
        length: data.len(),
        data,
    };

    // doesn't
    let args = Args {
        data,
        length: data.len(),
    };
}

This is one reason why a lot of proposals for named arguments try to unify them with structs. As I said before, not insurmountable, just things that need to be sorted.

Another small thing is a compatibility hazard: if we start naming parameters, renaming them breaks callers. Is that okay? Could you introduce aliases to help with this? That’s more complexity…

These are just some of the problems that come up in the design space, and this post is getting long, so I’ll leave it at this for now. But proposals for doing this have to engage with all of this and more, which is why language design is difficult.

In conclusion

I like to think that I change my opinions over time as the world or my understanding of it changes. So I thought it might be interesting to share a way in which an opinion that I’ve held for over a decade has changed a bit lately. I’m still not sure if named parameters are right for Rust, but I’m at least somewhat open to the idea these days. We’ll see what the language team decides if anyone does decide to keep trying to push this forward. And people do, for example, I am writing this in part because I saw this post go by today. This post isn’t intended to be support or a rebuttal of it, I actually didn’t even read it yet, it’s just that I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately (while working on Rue) and seeing that go by pushed me to write some of the thoughts down. You should probably go check it out, as it’s an actual proposal in this space and this post is more of an exploration of the general idea and my own thoughts on it.

Here’s my post about this post on BlueSky:

Steve Klabnik @steveklabnik.com

Arguing about arguments steveklabnik.com/writing/argu...

Arguing about arguments

Here’s some Rust code: // define a function fn foo (x : i32 , y : i32 ) -> i32 { // body elided } // call it let z = foo ( 5 , 6 ); In programming language jargon, we call x and y parameters and 5 and 6 arguments . Rust does not have many fancy features related to parameters and…

steveklabnik.com
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