Python print in terminal returning 'invalid syntax'

Question

Im using the terminal on my mac to run some python and when i try to print a string i get an invalid syntax error.

Michaels-MBP:~ mike$ python text.py
File "text.py", line 2
print(‘hi’)
      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I've tried it with single quotes and with and without parentheses but i keep getting that error, what is wrong.

In python, strings should be written either inside single quotes(') or in double quotes(") — niyasc
– niyasc, Commented May 8, 2015 at 7:48

kirelagin · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-08 07:51:27Z

4

Should be:

print('hi')

You have proper British quotes ‘foo’. Those are the right symbols to use when writing human-readable texts, but Python wants actual single quotes '.

Your editor probably has some kind of smart-quotes feature enabled, it is wise to turn this off when writing code (e.g. configure your editor to detect extensions like .py).

edited May 8, 2015 at 7:51

answered May 8, 2015 at 7:40

kirelagin

13.7k2 gold badges45 silver badges59 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

John La Rooy Over a year ago

If you look closely, you should see that the opening and closing single quotes are different, suggesting that @PM2Ring is correct

kirelagin Over a year ago

Yes that’s right, those are British quotes, apostrophe was just the first thing that came to my mind.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Python print in terminal returning 'invalid syntax'

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related