Pythonification of the asterisk-based collection packing/unpacking syntax

[Eelco]

On Dec 17, 6:18 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 4:14 AM, Roy Smith <r... at panix.com> wrote:
> > Import wildcarding?
>
> That's not an operator, any more than it is when used in filename
> globbing. The asterisk _character_ has many meanings beyond those of
> the operators * and **.
>
> ChrisA

To cut short this line of discussion; I meant the asterisk symbol
purely in the context of collection packing/unpacking. Of course it
has other uses too.

Even that single use requires a whole paragraph to explain completely;
when does it result in a tuple or a list, when is unpacking implicit
and when not, why * versus **, and so on.