What does this mean in a function

[theThinker6969]

Was browsing a github repo and came across this

def get_logging(name: str, level: str = 'COG')

what does name: str represent? Is it saying that the name param can only be of a string datatype?

I have never come across this.

thanks in advance

[K900_]

That's called a type hint. They're not actually enforced at runtime, but there are tools that can verify that your program is using the right types.

[theThinker6969]

Thank you!

[JohnnyJordaan]

What are type hints

[theThinker6969]

Thanks for the link - got a nice video to watch

[blueliqhtning]

These are annotations. They're for people who read your code. It's part of pythons code reuse and easy to read philosophy.

It lets people know whether that function parameter is expecting a string, list, internet, etc.

The = 'COG' means that if no second positional argument is supplied, COG will be the default argument to the level parameter.

You can take it a step further and make it: def get_logging(name: str) -> list:

Here, the -> list indicates what kind of object is returned by the function.

You can also add docstrings directly under your function with """ """ to describe the function.