What does SyntaxError Missing parentheses in call to print mean in Python

Question

When I try to use a print statement in Python  it gives me this error    gt  gt  gt  print  Hello  World     File   lt stdin gt    line 1     print  Hello  World                             SyntaxError  Missing parentheses in call to  print    What does that mean

User · Answer

There is a change in syntax from Python 2 to Python 3. In Python 2,

print "Hello, World!"

will work but in Python 3, use parentheses as

print("Hello, World!")

This is equivalent syntax to Scala and near to Java.

User · Answer

I could also just add that I knew everything about the syntax change between Python2 7 and Python3  and my code was correctly written as print  string   and even  print f string        But after some time of debugging I realized that my bash script was calling python like       python file name py   which had the effect of calling my python script by default using python2 7 which gave the error  So I changed my bash script to      python3 file name py   which of coarse uses python3 to run the script which fixed the error

User · Answer

This error message means that you are attempting to use Python 3 to follow an example or run a program that uses the Python 2 print statement     print  Hello  World       The statement above does not work in Python 3  In Python 3 you need to add parentheses around the value to be printed   print  Hello  World           SyntaxError  Missing parentheses in call to  print     is a new error message that was added in Python 3 4 2 primarily to help users that are trying to follow a Python 2 tutorial while running Python 3   In Python 3  printing values changed from being a distinct statement to being an ordinary function call  so it now needs parentheses    gt  gt  gt  print  Hello  World    Hello  World    In earlier versions of Python 3  the interpreter just reports a generic syntax error  without providing any useful hints as to what might be going wrong    gt  gt  gt  print  Hello  World     File   lt stdin gt    line 1     print  Hello  World                             SyntaxError  invalid syntax   As for why print became an ordinary function in Python 3  that didn t relate to the basic form of the statement  but rather to how you did more complicated things like printing multiple items to stderr with a trailing space rather than ending the line   In Python 2    gt  gt  gt  import sys  gt  gt  gt  print  gt  gt  sys stderr  1  2  3   print  gt  gt  sys stderr  4  5  6 1 2 3 4 5 6   In Python 3    gt  gt  gt  import sys  gt  gt  gt  print 1  2  3  file sys stderr  end       print 4  5  6  file sys stderr  1 2 3 4 5 6     Starting with the Python 3 6 3 release in September 2017  some error messages related to the Python 2 x print syntax have been updated to recommend their Python 3 x counterparts    gt  gt  gt  print  Hello     File   lt stdin gt    line 1     print  Hello                      SyntaxError  Missing parentheses in call to  print   Did you mean print  Hello       Since the  Missing parentheses in call to print  case is a compile time syntax error and hence has access to the raw source code  it s able to include the full text on the rest of the line in the suggested replacement  However  it doesn t currently try to work out the appropriate quotes to place around that expression  that s not impossible  just sufficiently complicated that it hasn t been done    The TypeError raised for the right shift operator has also been customised    gt  gt  gt  print  gt  gt  sys stderr Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt  TypeError  unsupported operand type s  for  gt  gt    builtin function or method  and   io TextIOWrapper   Did you mean  print  lt message gt   file  lt output stream gt       Since this error is raised when the code runs  rather than when it is compiled  it doesn t have access to the raw source code  and hence uses meta-variables   lt message gt  and  lt output stream gt   in the suggested replacement expression instead of whatever the user actually typed  Unlike the syntax error case  it s straightforward to place quotes around the Python expression in the custom right shift error message

User · Answer

Basically  since Python 3 x you need to use print with parenthesis   Python 2 x  print  Lord of the Rings   Python 3 x  print  Lord of the Rings      Explaination  print was a statement in 2 x  but it s a function in 3 x  Now  there are a number of good reasons for this    With function format of Python 3 x  more flexibility comes when printing multiple items with comman separated  You can t use argument splatting with a statement  In 3 x if you have a list of items that you want to print with a separator  you can do this      gt  gt  gt  items     foo    bar    baz    gt  gt  gt  print  items  sep       foo bar baz     You can t override a statement  If you want to change the behavior of print  you can do that when it s a function but not when it s a statement

User · Answer

If your code should work in both Python 2 and 3  you can achieve this by loading this at the beginning of your program   from   future   import print function     If code has to work in Python 2 and 3    Then you can print in the Python 3 way   print  python     If you want to print something without creating a new line - you can do this   for number in range 0  10       print number  end

User · Answer

Unfortunately  the old xkcd comic isn t completely up to date anymore     Since Python 3 0 you have to write   print  Hello  World      And someone has still to write that antigravity library

User · Answer

In Python 3  you can only print as   print  STRING     But in Python 2  the parentheses are not necessary

User · Answer

Outside of the direct answers here  one should note the other key difference between python 2 and 3  The official python wiki goes into almost all of the major differences and focuses on when you should use either of the versions  This blog post also does a fine job of explaining the current python universe and the somehow unsolved puzzle of moving to python 3   As far as I can tell  you are beginning to learn the python language  You should consider the aforementioned articles before you continue down the python 3 route  Not only will you have to change some of your syntax  you will also need to think about which packages will be available to you  an advantage of python 2  and potential optimizations that could be made in your code  an advantage of python 3

[python] What does "SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'" mean in Python?

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