Input parameters

At the beginning of this chapter, we saw that a function can take input parameters. Before we delve into all the possible types of parameters, let's make sure you have a clear understanding of what passing an argument to a function means. There are three key points to keep in mind:

• Argument-passing is nothing more than assigning an object to a local variable name
• Assigning an object to an argument name inside a function doesn't affect the caller
• Changing a mutable object argument in a function affects the caller

Before we explore the topic of arguments any further, please allow us to clarify the terminology a little. According to the official Python documentation:

"Parameters are defined by the names that appear in a function definition, whereas arguments are the values actually passed to a function when calling it. Parameters define what types of arguments a function can accept."

We will try to...