What is the difference between '/' and '//' when used for division?

Question

Is there a benefit to using one over the other? In Python 2, they both seem to return the same results:

>>> 6/3
2
>>> 6//3
2

Answer 1

5.0//2 results in 2.0, and not 2 because the return type of the return value from // operator follows python coercion (type casting) rules.

Python promotes conversion of lower datatype (integer) to higher data type (float) to avoid data loss.