How to understand pydoc parameters in documentation

Question

I was looking up seek() in pydoc file and found the explanation on what the function does, but I didn't understand how the documentation states the parameters. It looked like this:

seek(offset[, whence])

At first I thought it was a parameter in a parameter but it obviously isn't. What do those brackets denote in the parameter fields?

Possible duplicate of [How to read API documentation for newbs?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10925478/how-to-read-api-documentation-for-newbs) — Bergi, Nov 04 '18 at 19:14

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 15 '12 at 16:53

1

everything that is between [ and ] are optional

in this case you can call:

seek(offset)

or

seek(offset, whence)

answered Dec 15 '12 at 16:53

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How to understand pydoc parameters in documentation

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