Require parameters to be passed as keyword arguments for long funciton signatures.

What is wrong?

There are lots of places in the codebase with either classes or functions which take 6+ parameters. In these cases, calling these using positional arguments can be both error prone as well as hard to read.

• Errors arise when arguments are accidentally called in the wrong order.
• Difficult readability comes when it’s not clear what each parameter actually means since sometimes multiple parameters might be called with the same constant value f(b'', b'').

How can it be fixed

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3102/

PEP3102 introduces a new syntax for requiring certain arguments to be called as keyword arguments. I propose changing as many of the functions as seems appropriate to this format.

[palash25]

This is what I got from a git grep. I didn’t find 7 but only six functions with 6 or more arguments

evm/vm/logic/call.py
272:def compute_eip150_msg_gas(computation, gas, extra_gas, value, mnemonic, callstipend):

tests/trinity/json-fixtures-over-rpc/test_rpc_fixtures.py
131:def validate_account_attribute(fixture_key, rpc_method, rpc, state, addr, at_block):

evm/vm/forks/byzantium/transactions.py
13:    def create_unsigned_transaction(cls, nonce, gas_price, gas, to, value, data):

evm/vm/forks/frontier/transactions.py
79:    def create_unsigned_transaction(cls, nonce, gas_price, gas, to, value, data):

evm/vm/forks/homestead/transactions.py
43:    def create_unsigned_transaction(cls, nonce, gas_price, gas, to, value, data):

evm/vm/forks/spurious_dragon/transactions.py
35:    def create_unsigned_transaction(cls, nonce, gas_price, gas, to, value, data):

Are these the functions that you had in mind @pipermerriam ? Can I work on this?

[pipermerriam]

closed by #1368