pymongo cursor hint with nonexistent index name: "planner returned error: bad hint" - mongodb-query

Question

I'm using pymongo 3.6.0 and issuing a query with a hint and an index name. I thought I didn't need to worry about ensuring the collection had the specified index -- according to the docs, the hint should have no effect if the index doesn't exist: https://api.mongodb.com/python/3.6.0/api/pymongo/cursor.html#pymongo.cursor.Cursor.hint
But the cursor throws an error when trying to retrieve the data after the query is issued.
Example:
>> cursor = collection.find({'name': 'foo'}).hint('nonexistent_index_name')
>> cursor
<pymongo.cursor.Cursor>
The query returns a Cursor, but calling anything with the cursor:
>> cursor.count()
or
>> list(cursor)
Results in the error:
File "/python-2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo/cursor.py", line 1176, in next
if len(self.__data) or self._refresh():
File "/python-2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo/cursor.py", line 1087, in _refresh
self.__send_message(q)
File "/python-2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo/cursor.py", line 974, in __send_message
helpers._check_command_response(first)
File "/python-2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo/helpers.py", line 146, in _check_command_response
raise OperationFailure(msg % errmsg, code, response)
pymongo.errors.OperationFailure: error processing query: ns=collection_nameTree: name == "foo"
Sort: {}
Proj: {}
planner returned error: bad hint
This query returns the expected result when I use an existing index name, or use no hint:
>> cursor = collection.find({'name': 'foo'}).hint('existing_index_name')
>> list(cursor)
[{'name': 'foo'}]
>> cursor = collection.find({'name': 'foo'})
>> list(cursor)
[{'name': 'foo'}]
Am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

Resolved -- the Pymongo doc is wrong and a non-existent hint does return an error.
Ticket to fix documentation: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/PYTHON-1615