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

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

In Python 3.x, 5 / 2 will return 2.5 and 5 // 2 will return 2. The former is floating point division, and the latter is floor division, sometimes also called integer division.

In Python 2.2 or later in the 2.x line, there is no difference for integers unless you perform a from __future__ import division, which causes Python 2.x to adopt the 3.x behavior.

Regardless of the future import, 5.0 // 2 will return 2.0 since that's the floor division result of the operation.

You can find a detailed description at https://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.2.html#pep-238-changing-the-division-operator

Python 2.x Clarification:

To clarify for the Python 2.x line, / is neither floor division nor true division.

/ is floor division when both args are int, but is true division when either of the args are float.