Steven Bethard wrote: > [Guido van Rossum] > >>And good riddance! The print statement harks back to ABC and even >>(unvisual) Basic. Out with it! > > > [Barry Warsaw] > >>I have to strongly disagree. The print statement is simple, easy to >>understand, and easy to use. > > > [Paul Moore] > >>I agree with Barry. In particular, the behaviour of adding spaces >>between items is something I find very useful, and it's missing from >>the functional forms. > ... as proposed, but ... > > While I agree that mostly the print statement is "simple, easy to > understand, and easy to use", I've seen the trailing-comma version > cause confusion for a lot of newbies. I wouldn't mind at all if the > trailing-comma version disappeared in Python 3.0 -- if you need this > kind of complicated output, you can always use sys.stdout.write and/or > string formatting. > ... the trailing-comma version is indeed BASIC voodoo of ancient heritage, and not something I'd personally miss.
> The spaces-between-items point that Paul Moore makes is IMHO the best > argument against the proposed write*() functions. I think we *do* > need a statement or function of some sort that does the most basic > task: writing a line to sys.stdout that calls str() on each of the > elements and joins them with spaces. That is, I think we need to keep > *something* with functionality like: > > def XXX(*args): > sys.stdout.write('%s\n' % ' '.join(str(a) for a in args)) > > Note that this would keep the Hello World example simple: > > XXX(greeting, name) > Of course, for Python 3.0 if we lose the keyword there's nothing to stop us calling the convenience function "print". With the removal of the trailing-comma functionality we'd only have to add parentheses to 2.X print statements to have them work :-) Next question: could the function have a sensible return value, or is None the best possible result? hesitating-to-suggest-minus-one-ly y'rs - steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com