*args and **kwargs

[JonathanB]

Ok, this is probably definitely a newbie question, but I have looked
all over the Python library reference material and tutorials which I
can find online and I cannot find a clear definition of what these are
and more importantly how to use them. From what I can tell from their
use in the examples I've seen, they are for passing a variable number
of arguments to a function (which I need to do in a program I am
working on). But how do you use them? Is there a fixed order in which
the arguments within *arg or **kwarg should be passed or will be
called within a function? I realize this probably involves a long-
winded answer to a very simple and common programming problem, so if
someone has a link to TFM, I'll gladly go RTFM. I just can't find it.