How do the * and ** operators work in functions?

In Python, the * operator in a function definition is used to collect positional arguments into a tuple, and the ** operator is used to collect keyword arguments into a dictionary.

Example:

def func(*args, **kwargs):
    print('Positional arguments:', args)
    print('Keyword arguments:', kwargs)

func(1, 2, 3, a=4, b=5)

Output:

Positional arguments: (1, 2, 3)
Keyword arguments: {'a': 4, 'b': 5}

Also, * and ** are used when calling a function to unpack lists/tuples and dictionaries into positional and keyword arguments respectively:

args = (1, 2)
kwargs = {'a': 3, 'b': 4}
func(*args, **kwargs)

This allows flexible passing of a variable number of arguments.