The function name is taken from a function in the C standard library which returns a file descriptor. Returning the filename also is a Python freebie. It is a good idea to give a book like Johnson and Troan's Linux Application Development or Richard Steven's Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment a read, to get the background on this and the file descriptor mechanism, even if you aren't planning to do any C programming if you can avoid it; a lot of stuff in Python's os, sys socket, etc. modules (not to mention Perl/Ruby/whatever modules) directly reflect that heritage. (Also, the C function has a manpage: man mkstemp.)
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The function name is taken from a function in the C standard library which returns a file descriptor. Returning the filename also is a Python freebie. It is a good idea to give a book like Johnson and Troan's Linux Application Development or Richard Steven's Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment a read, to get the background on this and the file descriptor mechanism, even if you aren't planning to do any C programming if you can avoid it; a lot of stuff in Python's os, sys socket, etc. modules (not to mention Perl/Ruby/whatever modules) directly reflect that heritage. (Also, the C function has a manpage: man mkstemp.)