with the print as a keyword, you can't have modules defining a print function (for example, APIs where print makes sense as a function name ([he]xchat's py supp

with the print as a keyword, you can't have modules defining a print function (for example, APIs where print makes sense as a function name ([he]xchat's py support comes to mind)) additionally, if you want to override print in python2, you need to replace the stdout stream with your own inbetween buffer object, which also has the downside of being global