This code snippet, it's written in Go. It's a common pattern in Go for error handling. Here's what it means:

• `err != nil`: This condition checks if the error variable `err` is not equal to `nil`, which means an error has occurred.

• `return "", err`: If an error has occurred, the function returns an empty string `""` as well as the error itself. This allows the caller of the function to handle the error appropriately.

In essence, this code is used to propagate errors up the call stack while providing information about what went wrong.