On 26/06/2017 17:41, ru...@yahoo.com wrote:
On 06/26/2017 09:42 AM, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 01:16 am, Ben S. wrote:

print mm + "/" + dd + "/" + yyyy + " " + hour + ":" + mi + ":" + ss
^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'

Whats wrong?

Did you read the error message?

     Missing parentheses in call to 'print'

Is the message not clear enough? The call to print requires parentheses (round
brackets), like all other functions.

print(mm + "/" + dd + "/" + yyyy + " " + hour + ":" + mi + ":" + ss)


If the error message isn't clear enough, what can we do to make it more clear?

How about:

   In Python 2, 'print' was a statement and did not require
   parenthesis around its argument.  In Python 3 'print' has
   been changed to a function and now, like all functions,
   requires parenthesis around its arguments:
     python 2:  print arg1, arg2,...
     python 3:  print (arg1, arg2,...)

Did you seriously not understand how someone, reading a tutorial or
book written for Python 2, might be confused when a specific simple
syntax he/she was explicitly told works, doesn't work?  Not everyone
new to and starting to explore Python appreciates (?!) the major
compatibility breaks that occurred between Py2 and Py3.  One would
expect that in such a situation, the new user would certainly question
his/her code rather than something changed in Python.

Or better than changing the message, how about leaving it alone and
simply responding helpfully rather than snappily and condescending to
inevitable confusion that surely must have been anticipated when the
Python developers chose to make this change.

It's no wonder that some people (often women) who don't like contention,
find this list rather hostile.


Sorry to victim blame but why can't people copy the error message into a search engine, such as Google, and see what the problem is themselves?

The first page of results gives plenty of detail of the differences between Python 2 & 3 and this print issue with lots of explanations about print vs. print().

I'd only start asking questions on a newsgroup if I couldn't find explanations on the web or having read the explanations they were all telling me different things.

YMMV

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