I read the other threads that had to do with this error and it seems that my problem has an interesting distinct difference than all the posts I read so far, namely, all the other posts so far have the error in regards to either a user created class or a builtin system resource. I am experiencing this problem when calling a function, I can’t figure out what it could be for. Any ideas?

BOX_LENGTH = 100
turtle.speed(0)
fill = 0
for i in range(8):
    fill += 1
    if fill % 2 == 0:
        Horizontol_drawbox(BOX_LENGTH, fillBox = False)
    else:
        Horizontol_drawbox(BOX_LENGTH, fillBox = True)

    for i in range(8):
        fill += 1
        if fill % 2 == 0:
            Vertical_drawbox(BOX_LENGTH,fillBox = False)
        else:
            Vertical_drawbox(BOX_LENGTH,fillBox = True)

Error message:

    Horizontol_drawbox(BOX_LENGTH, fillBox = True)
TypeError: Horizontol_drawbox() got multiple values for argument 'fillBox'

This happens when a keyword argument is specified that overwrites a positional argument. For example, let’s imagine a function that draws a colored box. The function selects the color to be used and delegates the drawing of the box to another function, relaying all extra arguments.

def color_box(color, *args, **kwargs):
    painter.select_color(color)
    painter.draw_box(*args, **kwargs)

Then the call

color_box("blellow", color="green", height=20, width=30)

will fail because two values are assigned to color: "blellow" as positional and "green" as keyword. (painter.draw_box is supposed to accept the height and width arguments).

This is easy to see in the example, but of course if one mixes up the arguments at call, it may not be easy to debug:

# misplaced height and width
color_box(20, 30, color="green")

Here, color is assigned 20, then args=[30] and color is again assigned "green".

I had the same problem that is really easy to make, but took me a while to see through.

I had copied the declaration to where I was using it and had left the ‘self’ argument there, but it took me ages to realise that.

I had

self.myFunction(self, a, b, c='123')

but it should have been

self.myFunction(a, b, c='123')

This also happens if you forget selfdeclaration inside class methods.

Example:

class Example():
    def is_overlapping(x1, x2, y1, y2):
        # Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/a/12888920/940592
        return max(x1, y1) <= min(x2, y2)

Fails calling it like self.is_overlapping(x1=2, x2=4, y1=3, y2=5) with:

{TypeError} is_overlapping() got multiple values for argument ‘x1’

WORKS:

class Example():
    def is_overlapping(self, x1, x2, y1, y2):
        # Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/a/12888920/940592
        return max(x1, y1) <= min(x2, y2)

My issue was similar to Q—ten’s, but in my case it was that I had forgotten to provide the self argument to a class function:

class A:
    def fn(a, b, c=True):
        pass

Should become

class A:
    def fn(self, a, b, c=True):
        pass

This faulty implementation is hard to see when calling the class method as:

a_obj = A()
a.fn(a_val, b_val, c=False)

Which will yield a TypeError: got multiple values for argument. Hopefully, the rest of the answers here are clear enough for anyone to be able to quickly understand and fix the error. If not, hope this answer helps you!

Simply put you can’t do the following:

class C(object):
    def x(self, y, **kwargs):
        # Which y to use, kwargs or declaration? 
        pass

c = C()
y = "Arbitrary value"
kwargs["y"] = "Arbitrary value"
c.x(y, **kwargs) # FAILS

Because you pass the variable ‘y’ into the function twice: once as kwargs and once as function declaration.

I was brought here for a reason not explicitly mentioned in the answers so far, so to save others the trouble:

The error also occurs if the function arguments have changed order – for the same reason as in the accepted answer: the positional arguments clash with the keyword arguments.

In my case it was because the argument order of the Pandas set_axis function changed between 0.20 and 0.22:

0.20: DataFrame.set_axis(axis, labels)
0.22: DataFrame.set_axis(labels, axis=0, inplace=None)

Using the commonly found examples for set_axis results in this confusing error, since when you call:

df.set_axis(['a', 'b', 'c'], axis=1)

prior to 0.22, ['a', 'b', 'c'] is assigned to axis because it’s the first argument, and then the positional argument provides “multiple values”.

Both the following snippets of code do the same thing. They catch every exception and execute the code in the except: block

Snippet 1 –

try:
    #some code that may throw an exception
except:
    #exception handling code

Snippet 2 –

try:
    #some code that may throw an exception
except Exception as e:
    #exception handling code

What is exactly the difference in both the constructs?

In the second you can access the attributes of the exception object:

>>> def catch():
...     try:
...         asd()
...     except Exception as e:
...         print e.message, e.args
... 
>>> catch()
global name 'asd' is not defined ("global name 'asd' is not defined",)

But it doesn’t catch BaseException or the system-exiting exceptions SystemExit, KeyboardInterrupt and GeneratorExit:

>>> def catch():
...     try:
...         raise BaseException()
...     except Exception as e:
...         print e.message, e.args
... 
>>> catch()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<stdin>", line 3, in catch
BaseException

Which a bare except does:

>>> def catch():
...     try:
...         raise BaseException()
...     except:
...         pass
... 
>>> catch()
>>> 

See the Built-in Exceptions section of the docs and the Errors and Exceptions section of the tutorial for more info.

except:

accepts all exceptions, whereas

except Exception as e:

only accepts exceptions that you’re meant to catch.

Here’s an example of one that you’re not meant to catch:

>>> try:
...     input()
... except:
...     pass
... 
>>> try:
...     input()
... except Exception as e:
...     pass
... 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
KeyboardInterrupt

The first one silenced the KeyboardInterrupt!

Here’s a quick list:

issubclass(BaseException, BaseException)
#>>> True
issubclass(BaseException, Exception)
#>>> False


issubclass(KeyboardInterrupt, BaseException)
#>>> True
issubclass(KeyboardInterrupt, Exception)
#>>> False


issubclass(SystemExit, BaseException)
#>>> True
issubclass(SystemExit, Exception)
#>>> False

If you want to catch any of those, it’s best to do

except BaseException:

to point out that you know what you’re doing.

All exceptions stem from BaseException, and those you’re meant to catch day-to-day (those that’ll be thrown for the programmer) inherit too from Exception.

There are differences with some exceptions, e.g. KeyboardInterrupt.

Reading PEP8:

A bare except: clause will catch SystemExit and KeyboardInterrupt exceptions, making it harder to interrupt a program with Control-C, and can disguise other problems. If you want to catch all exceptions that signal program errors, use except Exception: (bare except is equivalent to except BaseException:).

Using the second form gives you a variable (named based upon the as clause, in your example e) in the except block scope with the exception object bound to it so you can use the infomration in the exception (type, message, stack trace, etc) to handle the exception in a more specially tailored manor.

Another way to look at this. Check out of the details of the exception:

In [49]: try: 
    ...:     open('file.DNE.txt') 
    ...: except Exception as  e: 
    ...:     print(dir(e)) 
    ...:                                                                                                                                    
['__cause__', '__class__', '__context__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setstate__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__suppress_context__', '__traceback__', 'args', 'characters_written', 'errno', 'filename', 'filename2', 'strerror', 'with_traceback']

There are lots of “things” to access using the ‘as e’ syntax.

This code was solely meant to show the details of this instance.