Statements and expressions are different syntactic elements. So "x = print" will throw a syntax error in 2.6: >>> x = print File "<stdin>", line 1

Statements and expressions are different syntactic elements. So "x = print" will throw a syntax error in 2.6: >>> x = print File "<stdin>", line 1 x = print ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax But not if you "from __future__ import print_function" first. This is also why __future__ imports need to be at the very top of each file they are included in (unlike other imports).