# Functions and arguments

This example shows how to work with function arguments

Let’s consider the following c++ file:

    #include <iostream>
    using namespace std;

    namespace ns{
        int myFunction(int a, const std::string& x1) {
            return a + 1;
        }
    }

The following code can be used to find the different arguments of a function and do some basic operations on them:

    from pygccxml import utils
    from pygccxml import declarations
    from pygccxml import parser

    # Find out the c++ parser
    generator_path, generator_name = utils.find_xml_generator()

    # Configure the xml generator
    xml_generator_config = parser.xml_generator_configuration_t(
        xml_generator_path=generator_path,
        xml_generator=generator_name)

    # The c++ file we want to parse
    filename = "example.hpp"

    decls = parser.parse([filename], xml_generator_config)
    global_namespace = declarations.get_global_namespace(decls)
    ns = global_namespace.namespace("ns")

    # Use the free_functions method to find our function
    func = ns.free_function(name="myFunction")

    # There are two arguments:
    print(len(func.arguments))

    # We can loop over them and print some information:
    for arg in func.arguments:
        print(
            arg.name,
            str(arg.decl_type),
            declarations.is_std_string(arg.decl_type),
            declarations.is_reference(arg.decl_type))