What is the point of using *args when a list of arguments can be used?

Question

Would passing in a list or dictionary of variables be more concise than passing in *args in Python methods?

For example,

def function(a, *argv):
   print('First variable:', a)
   for k in argv:
      print('Additional variable:',k)

is the same as

def function(a, list):
   print('First variable:', a)
   for k in list:
      print('Additional variable:',k)

except a list is passed in the second argument. What I think using *args would often do is to cause additional bugs in the program because the argument length only needs to be longer than the mandatory argument length. Would any please explain situations where *args would be really helpful? Thanks

Answer 1

The first function accepts:

function('hello', 'I', 'am', 'a', 'function')

The second one won't. For the second you'd need:

function('hello', ['I', 'am', 'a', 'function'])

In principle, the first one is used when your function can have an arbitrary number of parameters (think: print), while the second one specifies that there's always a second parameter, which is an iterable (not necessarily a list, despite the name)