PEP 214 - Why not print >> string?

[Aaron Swartz]

On 2002-10-01 1:08 PM, in article yu99d70it45b.fsf at europa.research.att.com,
"Andrew Koenig" <ark at research.att.com> wrote:

> So
>       x = ''
>       print >> x, 3
>       print >> x, 3
> 
> would cause x to be '3 3'?  Or would it be '3\n3\n' ?

The latter, as the normal print rules will apply (of course the \ns could be
suppressed by a trailing ',').
 
> What if I forgot to say  x = ''  first?

The same thing that happens now, namely:

>>> print >> foo, a
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
NameError: name 'foo' is not defined

Or

>>> x = 2
>>> print >> x, 'a'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'write'

(perhaps a better error could be given, but the idea is the same)

-- 
[ "Aaron Swartz" ; <mailto:me at aaronsw.com> ; <http://www.aaronsw.com/> ]