2.8 Output with print

So, we get things in with <STDIN>. How do we get things out? With the print() function. This function takes the values within its parentheses and puts them out without any embellishment onto standard output. Once again, unless you've done something odd, this will be your command console. For example:

print("hello world\n"); # say hello world, followed by newline
print "hello world\n";  # same thing

Note that the second example shows the form of print() without parentheses. In fact, many of the operators that look like functions also have a syntactic form that works without the parentheses. Whether or not to use the parentheses is mostly a matter of style and typing agility, although there are a few cases where you'll need the parentheses to remove ambiguity.

We'll see that you can actually give print a list of values, in the "Using print for Normal Output" section of Chapter 6, but we haven't talked about lists yet, so we'll put that discussion off until later.