Frederic Gagnon <gagnonfrederic9@gmail.com> added the comment: I didn't know if that "*" was part of python, or just specific to the documentation. I started by just looking around the page (header, section on the left and footer) for some kind of link pointing to how to interpret the documentation. Not finding anything, I went up the tree (first to https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html , then to https://docs.python.org/3/index.html ). I then went to the FAQ ( https://docs.python.org/3/faq/index.html ). (Little did I know, the answer was in Glossary...) Not finding any answer there, I tried googling it (simply starting with "python *"), but since * is interpreted as a wildcard, my searches only gave broad results about "python". I then asked a friend who pointed me to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51362773/what-does-mean-as-a-parameter-i... ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue42571> _______________________________________

Éric Araujo <merwok@netwok.org> added the comment: Thank you for the details! This helps finding a good place to document this. A link to function parameters from the top of the section may be good. But maybe we need a sidebar link on all pages that goes to a description of doc conventions! (and includes link to basic syntax doc, function parameter glossary, tutorial). (As you thought, there are notations in the docs (and even in some docstrings) that are documentation conventions but not valid Python, such as "range(start, stop[, step]) -> range object") Even the enty for '* (asterisk)' in the general index https://docs.python.org/3/genindex-Symbols.html links to places explaining *args, not * alone. I agree that the glossary entry for parameter is the best place to link to: it’s short and complete and can link to language reference for more. ---------- title: [docs] add links to Glossary#parameter in libraries -> Make documentation of * in function signatures easier to find versions: +Python 3.10, Python 3.8, Python 3.9 _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue42571> _______________________________________