Guido van Rossum suggested:

stream.write(a1, a2, ...) stream.writeln(a1, a2, ...) stream.writef(fmt, a1, a2, ...)

builtin functions write(), writeln(), writef() that call the corresponding method on sys.stdout.

These seem good, except that write typically matches read, and I'm not sure how well the equivalents would work. (They can be defined; they just feel a little too fragile, like C's input.)

Another real problem with print is that, while the automatic insertion of spaces is nice for beginners, it often gets in the way, and what you have to do to avoid this is pretty nasty: either drop print altogether in favor of sys.stdout.write(), or use string concatenation or a format string, assuming you have all the pieces available at the same time (which often you don't).

I usually take "I need to get rid of spaces" as an indication that I care about exact (not just readable, but exact) formatting, and *should* use either write or a format string (possibly waiting to collect the data). Putting the spaces back in (without a format string) would be even worse. Charles Cazabon's pointed out that it *could* be as simple as writeln(' '.join( ... )) but if there isn't a builtin alias, people (at least those not intimidated by the magic required to get simple output) *will* do things at least as bad as writeln(a, " ", b, " ", c) or as bugprone as # oops, format string and debug vars got out of sync writef(" Current Vals:%s %d %d%s", curval, i, k, name, age) -jJ