relrod · February 5, 2010 19:12
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
    * print is the only application-level functionality that has a statement dedicated to it. Within Python's world, syntax is generally used as a last resort, when something can't be done without help from the compiler. Print doesn't qualify for such an exception.
    * At some point in application development one quite often feels the need to replace print output by something more sophisticated, like logging calls or calls into some other I/O library. With a print() function, this is a straightforward string replacement, today it is a mess adding all those parentheses and possibly converting >>stream style syntax.
    * Having special syntax for print puts up a much larger barrier for evolution, e.g. a hypothetical new printf() function is not too far fetched when it will coexist with a print() function.
    * There's no easy way to convert print statements into another call if one needs a different separator, not spaces, or none at all. Also, there's no easy way at all to conveniently print objects with some other separator than a space.
    * If print() is a function, it would be much easier to replace it within one module (just def print(*args):...) or even throughout a program (e.g. by putting a different function in __builtin__.print). As it is, one can do this by writing a class with a write() method and assigning that to sys.stdout -- that's not bad, but definitely a much larger conceptual leap, and it works at a different level than print.
	* print is the only application-level functionality that has a statement dedicated to it. Within Python's world, syntax is generally used as a last resort, when something can't be done without help from the compiler. Print doesn't qualify for such an exception.
	* At some point in application development one quite often feels the need to replace print output by something more sophisticated, like logging calls or calls into some other I/O library. With a print() function, this is a straightforward string replacement, today it is a mess adding all those parentheses and possibly converting >>stream style syntax.
	* Having special syntax for print puts up a much larger barrier for evolution, e.g. a hypothetical new printf() function is not too far fetched when it will coexist with a print() function.
	* There's no easy way to convert print statements into another call if one needs a different separator, not spaces, or none at all. Also, there's no easy way at all to conveniently print objects with some other separator than a space.
	* If print() is a function, it would be much easier to replace it within one module (just def print(*args):...) or even throughout a program (e.g. by putting a different function in __builtin__.print). As it is, one can do this by writing a class with a write() method and assigning that to sys.stdout -- that's not bad, but definitely a much larger conceptual leap, and it works at a different level than print.