Purpose of star operator when used on List
<p>What is the star operator doing to the input argument list in this example?</p>

<pre><code>def main(name, data_dir='.'):
    print 'name', type(name)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(*sys.argv)
</code></pre>

<p>Concretely, if I run the program with the star operator it prints:</p>

<pre><code>name &lt;type 'str'&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>if run without the star <code>main(sys.argv)</code> it prints:</p>

<pre><code>name &lt;type 'list'&gt;
</code></pre>
