Use of *args and **kwargs?

Question

So I have difficulty with the concept of `*args` and `**kwargs`.So far I have learned that: * `*args` = list of arguments - as positional arguments * `**kwargs` = dictionary - whose keys become separate keyword arguments and the values become values of these arguments.I don't understand what programming task this would be helpful for. Maybe:I think to enter lists and dictionaries as arguments of a function AND at the same time as a wildcard, so I can pass ANY argument?Is there a simple example to explain how `*args` and `**kwargs` are used?Also the tutorial I found used just the "*" and a variable name. Are `*args` and `**kwargs` just placeholders or do you use exactly `*args` and `**kwargs` in the code?

Answer 1

*args is used when you define a method without explicitly declaring the arguments that it is supposed to receive. It is very useful when you don't know how many arguments is supposed to be passed to the function and you want to make your function flexible with any number of arguments with any name and type.

however, **kwargs is used when you have a set of expected arguments and you know how each argument must be handle is exploited in your method, but you still want to keep your function flexible to be called with any arbitrary subset of those arguments.