3 ms·

I hear this complaint about print all the time but I have never understood it. Why is print so special that it needs dedicated synta? Most languages don't do th

by joejev 10y ago

I hear this complaint about print all the time but I have never understood it. Why is print so special that it needs dedicated synta? Most languages don't do this and people don't seem to mind. Also, I almost never physically type print, but I do type a lot of function calls, so if anything I am more accustomed to typing it as a call.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago
> Why is print so special that it needs dedicated synta? parent answered the question: > Taking away permissiveness from a programming language just leads to developers not upgrade. No surprises there. Some people used the print statement because at a time this was the recommended approach. In fact the 2.7 tutorial uses the statement: https://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/interpreter.html#interactive-mode https://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/interpreter.html#intera... print behavior was changed, and combined with the other changes and incompatible modules a lot of people decided not to jump to 3.0. Since languages like C never had a print statement to begin with -- printf was always a function call -- this issue would never have appeared in the first place.
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
The print statement is a little more convenient in the REPL. Otherwise there is little to complain about having a more consistent, extensible print without any magic. Every Py2 coder should be sticking in "from __future__ import print_function" to train themselves for the transition.
- klibertp 10y ago
  > The print statement is a little more convenient in the REPL. IIRC ipython has a feature where you can prepend slash to any function (at the beginning of a line) to have parens inserted automatically, ie. In [0]: /print "foo" is executed as print("foo"). There - problem solved, and for all functions, not just one special case. Honestly, the crazy `print >>fileobject, "foo"` syntax is enough of a reason for removing it (print statement) from the language. It was unpythonic and I'm surprised it lasted this long in the language.
  - vram22 10y ago
    Yes, I don't like that last usage too. Non-orthogonal syntax is slightly harder to learn / remember, and the more of if there is, the more the cognitive / memory load. Of course, no language can be perfectly orthogonal or regular, though I guess Lisp comes close. (Not an expert on language design or theory.)

by joejev 10y ago

TAForObvReasons 10y ago

> Why is print so special that it needs dedicated synta? parent answered the question: > Taking away permissiveness from a programming language just leads to developers not upgrade. No surprises there. Some people used the print statement because at a time this was the recommended approach. In fact the 2.7 tutorial uses the statement: https://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/interpreter.html#interactive-mode https://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/interpreter.html#intera... print behavior was changed, and combined with the other changes and incompatible modules a lot of people decided not to jump to 3.0. Since languages like C never had a print statement to begin with -- printf was always a function call -- this issue would never have appeared in the first place.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

The print statement is a little more convenient in the REPL. Otherwise there is little to complain about having a more consistent, extensible print without any magic. Every Py2 coder should be sticking in "from __future__ import print_function" to train themselves for the transition.

klibertp 10y ago
> The print statement is a little more convenient in the REPL. IIRC ipython has a feature where you can prepend slash to any function (at the beginning of a line) to have parens inserted automatically, ie. In [0]: /print "foo" is executed as print("foo"). There - problem solved, and for all functions, not just one special case. Honestly, the crazy `print >>fileobject, "foo"` syntax is enough of a reason for removing it (print statement) from the language. It was unpythonic and I'm surprised it lasted this long in the language.
- vram22 10y ago
  Yes, I don't like that last usage too. Non-orthogonal syntax is slightly harder to learn / remember, and the more of if there is, the more the cognitive / memory load. Of course, no language can be perfectly orthogonal or regular, though I guess Lisp comes close. (Not an expert on language design or theory.)