*args question

[grocery_stocker]

On Mar 25, 7:05 am, grocery_stocker <cdal... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Given the following code...
>
> #!/usr/bin/env python
>
> import time
> import thread
>
> def myfunction(string,sleeptime,*args):
>     while 1:
>
>         print string
>         time.sleep(sleeptime) #sleep for a specified amount of time.
>
> if __name__=="__main__":
>
>     thread.start_new_thread(myfunction,("Thread No:1",2))
>
>     while 1:pass
>
> Taken from following URL....http://linuxgazette.net/107/pai.html
>
> How can myfunction() extract the tuple ("Thread No:1",2) from
> start_new_thread() if myfunction is only being passed the single arg
> ("Thread No:1",2)


The only thing that I think of is that the tuple ("Thread No:1",2) is
somehow being extract before it gets passed to myfunction(). Ie,
something like the following...

[cdalten at localhost ~]$ python
Python 2.4.3 (#1, Oct  1 2006, 18:00:19)
[GCC 4.1.1 20060928 (Red Hat 4.1.1-28)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def myfunction(first, second, *args):
...     print "The formal args are: ", args
...     print "the first value is:", first
...     print "the second value is:", second
...
>>> a, b = (1,2)
>>> myfunction(a,b)
The formal args are:  ()
the first value is: 1
the second value is: 2