In Python, ** is the exponentiation operator

In this article, we will learn about the ** operator in Python.

Double Star (**) is an arithmetic operator in Python (such as , -, *, **, /, //, %). The exponentiation operator is another name for it.

What Order/Precedence Do Arithmetic Operators Take?

The rules for both Arithmetic operators and Mathematical operators are same, which are as follows: exponential is run first, followed by multiplication and division, and then addition and subtraction.

Following are the priority orders of arithmetic operators used in decreasing mode −

() >> ** >> * >> / >> // >> % >> + >> -

Use of double star (**) operator

Using ** As Exponentiation Operator:

It is also known for performing exponential operations in numerical data

Example

The following program uses the ** operator as the power operator in expressions −

# using the double asterisk operator as an exponential operator
x = 2
y = 4

# getting exponential value of x raised to the power y
result_1 = x**y

# printing the value of x raised to the power y
print("result_1: ", result_1)

# getting the resultant value according to the
# Precedence of Arithmetic Operators
result_2 = 4 * (3 ** 2) + 6 * (2 ** 2 - 5)

print("result_2: ", result_2)

Output

On executing, the above program will generate the following output −

<font face="Liberation Mono, Consolas, Menlo, Courier, monospace"><span style="font-size: 14px;">result_1:  16
result_2:  30</span></font>

Using **As Arguments in Functions and Methods:

Double asterisks are also called **kwargs in function definitions. It is used to pass a variable length dictionary of keywords to a function

We can print the **kwargs parameters using the small function shown in the example below:

Example

The following program shows how to use kwargs in a user-defined function -

# creating a function that prints the dictionary of names.
def newfunction(**kwargs):
   # traversing through the key-value pairs if the dictionary
      for key, value in kwargs.items():
   # formatting the key, values of a dictionary
   # using format() and printing it
      print("My favorite {} is {}".format(key, value))
# calling the function by passing the any number of arguments
newfunction(language_1="Python", language_2="Java", language_3="C++")

Output

On executing, the above program will generate the following output −

My favorite language_1 is Python
My favorite language_2 is Java
My favorite language_3 is C++

We can easily use keyword arguments in our code through **kwargs. The best part is that when we use **kwargs as parameters, we can pass a large number of parameters to the function. Creating functions that accept **kwargs is the best option when a relatively small number of inputs are expected in the argument list.

in conclusion

This article taught us about Python's ** operator. We learned about the precedence of operators in the Python compiler, as well as how to utilize the ** operator, which functions like a kwargs and may accept any amount of arguments for a function and is also used to calculate the power.

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