What do double parentheses mean in a function call? e.g. func(stuff)(stuff)?

Question

Original title:

"Help me understand this weird Python idiom? sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(\'utf-8\')(sys.stdout)"

Answer 1

codecs.getwriter('utf-8') returns a class with StreamWriter behaviour and whose objects can be initialized with a stream.

>>> codecs.getwriter('utf-8')

Thus, you are doing something similar to:

sys.stdout = StreamWriter(sys.stdout)