Humor: The Evolution of a Programmer

[Bill Sconce]

bscott at ntisys.com writes:

> On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, at 10:08pm, sconce at in-spec-inc.com wrote:
>> Python hacker  
>> 
>> 'Hello, world.' 
> 
>   Transcript of my shell session: 
> 
> 	$ cat > hw.py
> 	'Hello, world.'
> 	^D
> 	$ python hw.py 
> 	$  
> 
>   What did I do wrong?
 

Omigosh.  I must have been too cryptic.  What was "wrong" was $.
No one said $. 

A Python hacker seldom needs to resort to a shell. :) 

Seriously, earlier posts were correct.  When Python evaluates
an expression at the interactive prompt, and your interactive
expression doesn't say what to do with the result (e.g.,
no = sign or no "print") Python assumes the "print".  As you
develop a program you do a lot of that kind of inspection -
it's only a savings of typing "print" each time, but it adds up.
A typically "Pythonic" streamlining. 

>>> print 2+2
4
>>> 2+2
4 

There is nothing special about the case of a string expression.
Python does the same for any kind of object. 

>>> somefile = open('spam.eggs', 'w')
>>> somefile
<open file 'spam.eggs', mode 'w' at 0x10103758>
>>> print somefile
<open file 'spam.eggs', mode 'w' at 0x10103758> 

In a running program you don't usually want that behavior.  For
instance, an expression might be something whose returned value
you don't need.  An example might be an expresssion which is only
a call to a function. 

>>> somefile.close()          # Close the file
>>>                           # Ahhh.   Silence..
>>> print somefile.close()    # Same, AND print what's returned
None                          #  ..which is the empty ojbect, None
>>>

[My example is knowingly a little contrived;  please forgive.
There's more to the way the empty object behaves.  This example
is intended to show the flavor of Python's design.] 

Extra credit, what will the following do (if you've just stepped
through the statements above)? 

>>> print somefile