A * can appear in function calls as well:
The semantics is in this case “inverse” to a star in a function definition. An argument will be unpacked and not packed:
>>> def f(x,y,z):
... print(x,y,z)
...
>>> p = (47,11,12)
>>> f(*p)
(47, 11, 12)
This call is definitely more comfortable than the following one:
>>> f(p[0],p[1],p[2])
(47, 11, 12)
>>>