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POWhy print statement is not pythonic?
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copied!<p>This question was bugging me for quite a while (as evidenced by <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/933214/what-are-the-used-unused-features-of-python-3">my previous question</a>): why exactly is <code>print(x)</code> better (which is defined as being more pythonic) than <code>print x</code>?</p> <p>For those who don't know, the <code>print</code> statement was changed into function in Python 3.0. The formal documentation is in <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3105/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PEP 3105</a> and motivation is in <a href="http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-September/056154.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Guido van Rossum's email</a>.</p> <p>To those points I would like to make a counterpoint:</p> <ol> <li>There are other operators, such as <code>import</code> which we write as a statement, though their functionality is actually duplicated with a function <code>__import__</code> <ul> <li>To beginners, the operator <code>print</code> does not belong to the general application logic. To them it's the mysterious operator which is a culmination of their program. They expect it to look differently.</li> <li>All the beginner books which were describing basic Python 2.x are now <em>guaranteed to be broken from the first example</em>. Certainly, languages sometimes change, but those changes are usually less visible to novices. </li> <li>It's not immediately obvious to me that a functionality of <code>print</code> can be duplicated on an application level. For example, sometimes I would like to redirect print from a console as a modal OS dialog. </li> <li>While people say it's hard to rewrite all <code>print</code> statements to a function, they have forced every Python 2.x developer to do exactly that for all their projects. Good, it's not hard with automatic converter.</li> <li>Everyone who enjoys having an ability to manipulate function <code>print</code> would be just as well-served if <code>print</code> was a statement wrapping function <code>__print__</code>.</li> </ul></li> </ol> <p>So, can we please have a canonical answer to this question on the pages of Stack Overflow?</p>

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