The asterisk in *c in Python?

Question

What does * mean in
a,b,*c,d = 1,2,3
print(c)

#output: []

And why does it give this output?

Answer 1

Say you had this line instead:

a,b,*c,d = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

a and b take the first two numbers (because a and b appear first), so a would be assigned the value 1, and b would be 2.

d being the last in the list, takes the last number, so d is now 10.

*c means that c is assigned everything else in between. So c would now be [3,4,5,6,7,8,9].

In your example, there wasn't anything left to be assigned to c, so it was an empty set.

Answer 2

thanks Russ ! that is a great explanation!