print ending with comma

[Duncan Booth]

 wrote:

> I recently ran into the issue with 'print' were, as it says on the web
> page called "Python Gotchas"
> (http://www.ferg.org/projects/python_gotchas.html):
> 
> The Python Language Reference Manual says, about the print statement,
> 
> A "\n" character is written at the end, unless the print statement ends
> with a comma.
> 
> What it doesn't say is that if the print statement does end with a
> comma, a trailing space is printed.
> --
> But this isn't exactly correct either. If you run this program:
> import sys
> print '+',
> print '-',
> sys.stdout.write('=')
> print
> --
> the output is:
> + -=
> Note that there is no space after the '-'. (Tested on Win 2000 python
> 2.3.4, OS X 10.3.9 python 2.3 & 2.4)
> 
> I know that this is not a massively important issue, but can someone
> explain what's going on?
> 
The space isn't appended to the value printed, it is output before the next 
value is printed.

The file object has an attribute softspace (initially 0). If this is 0 then 
printing a value simply writes the value to the file. If it is 1 then 
printing a value writes a space followed by the value.

After any value which ends with a newline character is printed the 
softspace attribute is reset to 0 otherwise it is set to 1. Also when a 
print statement ends without a trailing comma it outputs a newline and 
resets softspace.

Change your print test a little to see this:

>>> print "+",;print "-",;sys.stdout.write("=");print "X"
+ -= X

Or try this to suppress unwanted spaces in your output:

>>> def nospace(s):
	sys.stdout.softspace = 0
	return s

>>> print "a",nospace("b"),"c"
ab c