open('example.txt', encoding, newline, errors, mode)

    open('example.txt', *, encoding, newline, errors, mode)

Would you agree that the two of those have *radically* different
meanings? The first will, if you are lucky, fail immediately; the second
may succeed. But to the poor unfortunate reader who doesn't know what
the star does, the difference is puzzling.

This holds even more strongly if the various parameters take the same
type:

    # a real signature from one of my functions
    def function(
           meta:bool,
           dunder:bool,
           private:bool,
           ignorecase:bool,
           invert:bool)

    function(dunder, invert, private, meta, ignorecase)
    function(*, dunder, invert, private, meta, ignorecase)




[...]
> > Have I missed something?
> >
>
> Something weird seems to have happened in this thread. Rodrigo first
> proposed the magic asterisk syntax here:
> https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/N2ZY5NQ5T2OJRSUGZJOANEQOGEQIYYIK/

Ah, that's the bit I missed.

I missed that message too.

But even having missed the original proposal, it was immediately obvious to me what the code was saying with very little intro from Alex Hall, because of its similarity to keyword-only function definition syntax. It feels like the meaning is obvious. 

However I'll agree with Steve D' that it could easily lead to some confusing reading. The example I quoted above is compelling.

At first I was tempted to say: "hey now! That code was written in a puppet obfuscatory way! Why would someone change the order of the arguments like that?"

But the answer came to me: because of the proposed syntax I am feeling very free to just splatter all the arguments the function asked for in any order-- I'm not going to scroll up to read the docs to mimic the safe order especially if the parameters are keyword only.

But this means the reader could miss the star, especially with a very large function call over multiple lines, and if that reader happens to use that particular function A LOT and know the parameter order without having to look they would pretty easily believe the arguments are doing something different than what is actually happening.

It's an interesting problem with the syntax. I'm not sure if it moves me in the negative on the proposal or not.