Is there a builtin identity function in python?

Question

I\'d like to point to a function that does nothing:

def identity(*args)
    return args

my use case is something like this

Answer 1

The thread is pretty old. But still wanted to post this.

It is possible to build an identity method for both arguments and objects. In the example below, ObjOut is an identity for ObjIn. All other examples above haven't dealt with dict **kwargs.

class test(object):
    def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
        self.args = args
        self.kwargs = kwargs
    def identity (self):
        return self

objIn=test('arg-1','arg-2','arg-3','arg-n',key1=1,key2=2,key3=3,keyn='n')
objOut=objIn.identity()
print('args=',objOut.args,'kwargs=',objOut.kwargs)

#If you want just the arguments to be printed...
print(test('arg-1','arg-2','arg-3','arg-n',key1=1,key2=2,key3=3,keyn='n').identity().args)
print(test('arg-1','arg-2','arg-3','arg-n',key1=1,key2=2,key3=3,keyn='n').identity().kwargs)

$ py test.py
args= ('arg-1', 'arg-2', 'arg-3', 'arg-n') kwargs= {'key1': 1, 'keyn': 'n', 'key2': 2, 'key3': 3}
('arg-1', 'arg-2', 'arg-3', 'arg-n')
{'key1': 1, 'keyn': 'n', 'key2': 2, 'key3': 3}