I actually trust that the developers had good reasons for this change, but I think it is silly to argue that it is costless. The question is, what is the cost-benefit trade-off?
One obvious cost is that working at the interpreter prompt is now slightly less convenient. Just because the cost is small does not mean it should not be offset by a benefit. I am less sympathetic to the suggestion that there is an inconvenience when working in an editor, but clearly some people find one. My preferred transition would have been to retain the `print` statement but add a `printf` function (i.e., the new `print` function). Presumably many would find this a repulsive redundancy and a needless maintenance headache. Alan Isaac -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
