What does “**” mean in python? [duplicate]

Answer 1

**means kwargs. here is a good article about it.
read this: http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2008/01/how-to-use-args-and-kwargs-in-python/

Answer 2

'**' takes a dict and extracts its contents and passes them as parameters to a function. Take this function for example:

def func(a=1, b=2, c=3):
   print a
   print b
   print b

Now normally you could call this function like this:

func(1, 2, 3)

But you can also populate a dictionary with those parameters stored like so:

params = {'a': 2, 'b': 3, 'c': 4}

Now you can pass this to the function:

func(**params)

Sometimes you'll see this format in function definitions:

def func(*args, **kwargs):
   ...

*args extracts positional parameters and **kwargs extract keyword parameters.