python print

A detailed look at the print function.
As some might have skipped over it, we want to emphasize that we wrote "print function" and not "print statement".
You can easily find out how crucial this difference is, if you take an arbitrary Python program written in version 2.x and if you try to let it run with a Python3 interpreter.
In most cases you will receive error messages.
One of the most frequently occurring errors will be related to print, because most programs contain prints.
We can generate the most typical error in the interactive Python shell:

$ python3
Python 3.2.3 (default, Apr 10 2013, 05:03:36) 
[GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print 42
  File "", line 1
    print 42
           ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>>

This is a familiar error message for most of us: We have forgotten the parentheses. "print" is - as we have already mentioned - a function in version 3.x. Like any other function print expects its arguments to be surrounded by parentheses. So parenthesis are an easy remedy for this error:

>>> print(42)
42
>>>

But this is not the only difference to the old print. The output behaviour has changed as well:

print Function

The arguments of the print function are the following ones:

print(value1, ..., sep=' ', end='\n', file=sys.stdout, flush=False)

The print function can print an arbitrary number of values ("value1, value2, ..."), which are separated by commas. These values are separated by blanks. In the following example we can see two print calls. We are printing two values in both cases, i.e. a string and a float number:

>>> print("a = ", a)
a =  3.564
>>> print("a = \n", a)
a = 
 3.564
>>>

We can learn from the second print of the example that a blank between two values, i.e. "a = \textbackslash n" and "3.564", is always printed, even if the output is continued in the following line. This is different to Python 2, as there will be no blank printed, if a new line has been started. It's possible to redefine the seperator between values by assigning an arbitrary string to the keyword parameter "sep", e.e. an empty string or a smiley:

>>> print("a","b")
a b
>>> print("a","b",sep="")
ab
>>> print(192,168,178,42,sep=".")
192.168.178.42
>>> print("a","b",sep=":-)")
a:-)b
>>>

A print call is ended by a newline, as we can see in the following usage:

>>> for i in range(4):
...     print(i)
... 
0
1
2
3
>>>

To change this behaviour, we can assign an arbitrary string to the keyword parameter "end". This string will be used for ending the output of the values of a print call:

>>> for i in range(4):
...     print(i, end=" ")
... 
0 1 2 3 >>> 
>>> for i in range(4):
...     print(i, end=" :-) ")
... 
0 :-) 1 :-) 2 :-) 3 :-) >>>

The output of the print function is send to the standard output stream (sys.stdout) by default. By redefining the keyword parameter "file" we can send the output into a different stream e.g. sys.stderr or a file:

>>> fh = open("data.txt","w")
>>> print("42 is the answer, but what is the question?", file=fh)
>>> fh.close()
>>>

We can see that we don't get any output in the interactive shell. The output is sent to the file "data.txt". It's also possible to redirect the output to the standard error channel this way:

>>> import sys
>>> # output into sys.stderr:
... 
>>> print("Error: 42", file=sys.stderr)
Error: 42