6.6 The print statement
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print_stmt ::= "print" ( [expression ("," expression)* [","]] | ">>" expression [("," expression)+ [","]] )
print evaluates each expression in turn and writes the resulting object to standard output (see below). If an object is not a string, it is first converted to a string using the rules for string conversions. The (resulting or original) string is then written. A space is written before each object is (converted and) written, unless the output system believes it is positioned at the beginning of a line. This is the case (1) when no characters have yet been written to standard output, (2) when the last character written to standard output is "\n", or (3) when the last write operation on standard output was not a print statement. (In some cases it may be functional to write an empty string to standard output for this reason.) Note: Objects which act like file objects but which are not the built-in file objects often do not properly emulate this aspect of the file object's behavior, so it is best not to rely on this.
A "\n" character is written at the end, unless the print statement ends with a comma. This is the only action if the statement contains just the keyword print.
Standard output is defined as the file object named stdout
in the built-in module sys. If no such object exists, or if
it does not have a write() method, a RuntimeError
exception is raised.
print also has an extended
form, defined by the second portion of the syntax described above.
This form is sometimes referred to as ``print chevron.''
In this form, the first expression after the >> must
evaluate to a ``file-like'' object, specifically an object that has a
write() method as described above. With this extended form,
the subsequent expressions are printed to this file object. If the
first expression evaluates to None, then sys.stdout is
used as the file for output.
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Release 2.4.4c1, documentation updated on 11 October 2006.