Explain unfamiliar code in plain English

See it in action

What this prompt produces with example details filled in:

**In one sentence:** This is a reusable "retry" wrapper you attach to any function so that if it fails, it automatically tries again a few times before giving up.

**What it does:** `retry` is a *decorator factory* — you call it with settings (how many times to retry, how long to wait between tries) and it hands back a decorator you place above a function with `@retry(...)`. Once attached, that function will automatically re-run itself whenever it raises an error, up to `times` attempts, pausing `delay` seconds between each try. If it is still failing on the last attempt, it stops swallowing the error and lets it through to the caller.

**Step by step:**
1. **Line 4 — the outer function `retry(times=3, delay=1)`.** This is the part you actually call, e.g. `@retry(times=5, delay=2)`. It does not touch your function yet; it just remembers your settings and returns the real decorator below. The defaults mean "3 tries, 1 second apart" if you do not specify.
2. **Line 5 — `def decorator(func):`.** This is the actual decorator. Python hands it your original function (`func`) automatically when you apply `@retry(...)`.
3. **Line 6 — `@wraps(func)`.** A housekeeping touch: it copies your original function's name and docstring onto the wrapper, so error messages and tools still show the real function's identity instead of the generic "wrapper". Purely cosmetic, but good manners.
4. **Line 7 — `def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):`.** This is what replaces your function. `*args, **kwargs` is Python's way of saying "accept any arguments at all and pass them straight through," so the wrapper works no matter what arguments the original function takes.
5. **Lines 8–14 — the retry loop.** It loops up to `times` attempts. On each pass it tries to run your real function and immediately `return`s the result if it succeeds — that is the happy path, and one success ends everything. If the function raises, the `except` catches it: on the final attempt (line 12–13) it `raise`s the error back to the caller; otherwise it sleeps for `delay` seconds (line 14) and loops around to try again.

**Inputs and outputs:**
- **Inputs:** `times` (how many attempts) and `delay` (seconds to wait between attempts), plus whatever arguments the wrapped function itself takes.
- **Output:** whatever the wrapped function returns on a successful attempt. If every attempt fails, the last error is re-raised.

**Watch out for:**
- **Side effect — it pauses your program.** `time.sleep(delay)` blocks execution; with `times=3, delay=1` a fully-failing call freezes for about 2 seconds before it errors. In async or UI code, a blocking sleep can be a real problem.
- **It catches *every* exception.** `except Exception` retries on all errors, including bugs like a misspelled variable — not just the flaky network calls you probably had in mind. Retrying something that can never succeed just wastes time.
- **Edge case — `times=0`.** The loop never runs, so the function is never called and `wrapper` silently returns `None`. Worth knowing if you ever pass that value in from a variable.

**Glossary:**
- **Decorator:** a function that wraps another function to add behavior (here, retrying) without changing the original's code.
- **`*args, **kwargs`:** a catch-all for "any positional and keyword arguments," used to forward them along untouched.

*One thing I can't tell from this snippet alone: what kinds of errors the wrapped functions actually raise, so I can't judge whether "retry on every exception" is safe in your codebase — that depends on how `@retry` is used elsewhere.*