In Data Structures

For example, consider a function that retrieves a user's details:

def get_user_details():
    # Returns a user's details as a list:
    # first_name, last_name, year_of_birth, is_admin
    return ["Thomas", "Richards", 1984, True]

This is a somewhat contrived example, but it's not uncommon to see data returned in lists or tuples. Elsewhere in the code we might need to perform some check on whether the user is an administrator or not:

def launch_nukes(user):
    if user[3]:
        # actually launch the nukes
    else:
        raise PermissionDeniedError("User is not an administrator!")

These two functions are linked by connascence of position. If the order of the values in the user list ever changes, both locations must be updated (this example is particularly scary if someone were to update the user list to be [first_name, initials, last_name, year_of_birth, is_admin] without updating the check inside launch_nukes).

This connascence can be improved to connascence of name by turning the list into a dictionary or class. The following example shows how the above functions might look as a dictionary:

def get_user_details():
    return {
        "first_name": "Thomas",
        "last_name": "Richards",
        "year_of_birth": 1984,
        "is_admin": True,
    }


def launch_nukes(user):
    if user['is_admin']:
        # actually launch the nukes
    else:
        raise PermissionDeniedError("User is not an administrator!")

Note that these two functions are still coupled, but we've turned connascence of position into the weaker connascence of name. This has also increased the readability of the get_user_details function - the explicit comment is no longer needed to document the order of the keys.

A similar solution is to use a class instead of a dictionary, and this can be beneficial if the structure being returned has constraints or operations associated with it.

In Function Arguments

Connascence of position also frequently occurs in function argument lists. Consider the following function declaration from a mythical email-sending utility library:

def send_email(firstname, lastname, email, subject, body, attachments=None):

Code calling this send_email function must remember the order of arguments. Should that order ever change, all calling locations must also be updated. This example could also be improved to connascence of name by passing a structured object (a class or dictionary) instead of a number of parameters.