2.8 Output with print

So, we get things in with <STDIN> . How do we get things out? With the print() function. This function takes the values within its parentheses and puts them out without any embellishment onto standard output . Once again, unless you've done something odd, this will be your command console. For example:

print("hello world\n"); # say hello world, followed by newline
print "hello world\n";  # same thing

Note that the second example shows the form of print() without parentheses. In fact, many of the operators that look like functions also have a syntactic form that works without the parentheses. Whether or not to use the parentheses is mostly a matter of style and typing agility, although there are a few cases where you'll need the parentheses to remove ambiguity.

We'll see that you can actually give print a list of values, in the "Using print for Normal Output" section of Chapter 6 , but we haven't talked about lists yet, so we'll put that discussion off until later.