Asterisk in function call

Question

I\'m using itertools.chain to \"flatten\" a list of lists in this fashion:

uniqueCrossTabs = list(itertools.chain(*uniqueCrossTabs))

how is

Answer 1

Just an alternative way of explaining the concept/using it.

import random

def arbitrary():
    return [x for x in range(1, random.randint(3,10))]

a, b, *rest = arbitrary()

# a = 1
# b = 2
# rest = [3,4,5]