In python everything is an object and you can pass it around easily.
So I can do :
>> def b():
....print "b"
>> a = b
>> a()
b
But if I do
a = print
I get SyntaxError . Why so ?
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4 Answers
In Python 2.x, print is a statement not a function. In 2.6+ you can enable it to be a function within a given module using from __future__ import print_function. In Python 3.x it is a function that can be passed around.
2 Comments
jfs
the future statement is explicit. It won't break any code because it affects only code that expects it in the same module
Jon Clements
@J.F.Sebastian - thank you - I always confuse that with "A future statement typed at an interactive interpreter prompt will take effect for the rest of the interpreter session."
In python2, print is a statement. If you do from __future__ import print_function, you can do as you described. In python3, what you tried works without any imports, since print was made a function.
This is covered in PEP3105
Comments
The other answers are correct. print is a statement, not a function in python2.x. What you have will work on python3. The only thing that I have to add is that if you want something that will work on python2 and python3, you can pass around sys.stdout.write. This doesn't write a newline (unlike print) -- it acts like any other file object.
Comments
print is not a function in pre 3.x python. It doesn't even look like one, you don't need to call it by (params)
