why is the output of s='hello' > print (*s) > h e l l o and not hello ?

Answer 1

because the star (*) unpacks an iterable. And all a string is is an array (or list) of characters

you basically did this:
s = ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o']
print(*s)

# output
h e l l o

Answer 2

The print function prints every argument you give it separated by a space.

Example:

print('Hello', 'World')

Both strings will be separated by a space.

*, as Slick said, 'unpacks' s and passes all the letters separately as args.

You can change the default space with the parameter sep:

print('Hel', 'lo', sep='*')

Now instead of a space, * is used as the separator, and the output will be 'Hel*lo'.

And this, of course, also works when you unpack an iterable and pass it to print.

Answer 3

Haha, HonFu I honestly only knew that cause you dropped that knowledge a while ago. And I've seen the "sep" param, but never used it, thanks for the lesson again man!