strange grammar feature

Hello
(I'm a Groovy newbie)
by reading a groovy grammar (http://groovy.codehaus.org/jsr/spec/GroovyRecognizer.html#argument)
I do not understand the "argument" production
apparentlty there may be something like "*:" as a label .... seen nothing on the web to explain the meaning of that ...
any hint?
thanks

Hello Bernard!

Nice question!, *. operator is used to spread all elements in a list...

assert ['cat', 'elephant']*.size() == [3, 8]

while *: is used to spread or combine maps, so you could do something like this:

def argMap = [b:2, c:3, d:4]

fancyMethod(a:1, *:argMap) // You can see this complies the "argument" production in the groovy grammar

You could also see this link http://marc.info/?l=groovy-user&m=126217908601838

Hope this helps!
Regards,
Serch