simple eval question

[Gerhard Häring]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 12:41:28PM -0800, N Becker wrote:
> What is wrong with this?
> 
> eval ("print \"hello\"')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "<string>", line 1
>     print "hello"
>         ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> 
> I expected that eval takes a string an evaluates it as input to the
> interpreter, as if it had been typed into the command line.  Was I
> wrong?

You were almost right. eval() takes an expression, while exec() takes
statements. print is a statement, not an expression, so you need exec()
here.

Gerhard
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