Core Python Programming

11.6. Variable-length Arguments

There may be situations where your function is required to process an unknown number of arguments. These are called variable-length argument lists. Variable-length arguments are not named explicitly in function declarations because the number of arguments is unknown before run-time (and even during execution, the number of arguments may be different on successive calls), an obvious difference from formal arguments (positional and default) which are named in function declarations. Python supports variable-length arguments in two ways because function calls provide for both keyword and non-keyword argument types.