What does the term 'positional arguments' refer to in function calls?

The term 'positional arguments' refers specifically to arguments that are passed to a function based on the order in which they are defined in the function's signature. When a function is called, the values supplied in the call are matched to the parameters of the function from left to right. This means that the first value provided corresponds to the first parameter, the second value to the second parameter, and so on.

This is crucial in Python programming, as it allows for flexibility and simplicity when calling functions. For instance, if you have a function defined as def my_function(a, b):, when calling my_function(1, 2), the value 1 is assigned to a and 2 is assigned to b purely based on their positions in the call.

This concept distinguishes positional arguments from other types of arguments, such as keyword arguments, which explicitly match values to parameters by name, allowing for a different order in the function call.