Syntax error on print with Python 3 [duplicate]

Question

Why do I receive a syntax error when printing a string in Python 3?

>>> print "hello World"
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    print "hello World"
                      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Alatea

hint: for compatibility code in python 2.7+ put this into the beginning of the module: from __future__ import print_function – Corgi

...import print_function doesn't seem to work, do you need to change something in the print statements? or should the import do it? – Lave

For the record, this case will be getting a custom error message in Python 3.4.2: #25445939 – Kinnikinnick

2to3 is a Python program that reads Python 2.x source code and applies a series of fixers to transform it into valid Python 3.x code Further informations can be found here: [Python Documentation: Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation ](docs.python.org/2/library/2to3.html) – Fifth

Closing this as a dupe of the other post by @ncoghlan, because 1. It has a more comprehensive answer 2. It is updated to match the latest error. – Countrybred

Answer 1

In Python 3, print became a function. This means that you need to include parenthesis now like mentioned below:

print("Hello World")

Radiosurgery

Answer 2

It looks like you're using Python 3.0, in which print has turned into a callable function rather than a statement.

print('Hello world!')

Bergerac

Answer 3

Because in Python 3, print statement has been replaced with a print() function, with keyword arguments to replace most of the special syntax of the old print statement. So you have to write it as

print("Hello World")

But if you write this in a program and someone using Python 2.x tries to run it, they will get an error. To avoid this, it is a good practice to import print function:

from __future__ import print_function

Now your code works on both 2.x & 3.x.

Check out below examples also to get familiar with print() function.

Old: print "The answer is", 2*2
New: print("The answer is", 2*2)

Old: print x,           # Trailing comma suppresses newline
New: print(x, end=" ")  # Appends a space instead of a newline

Old: print              # Prints a newline
New: print()            # You must call the function!

Old: print >>sys.stderr, "fatal error"
New: print("fatal error", file=sys.stderr)

Old: print (x, y)       # prints repr((x, y))
New: print((x, y))      # Not the same as print(x, y)!

Source: What’s New In Python 3.0?

Xavierxaviera