How to print to stderr in Python?

Question

There are several ways to write to stderr:

# Note: this first one does not work in Python 3 print >> sys.stderr, "spam"  sys.stderr.write("spam\n")  os.write(2, b"spam\n")  from __future__ import print_function print("spam", file=sys.stderr) 

That seems to contradict zen of Python #13 ^†, so what's the difference here and are there any advantages or disadvantages to one way or the other? Which way should be used?

^†_{There should be one — and preferably only one — obvious way to do it.}

Answer 1

I found this to be the only one short, flexible, portable and readable:

# This line only if you still care about Python2 from __future__ import print_function  import sys  def eprint(*args, **kwargs):     print(*args, file=sys.stderr, **kwargs) 

The optional function eprint saves some repetition. It can be used in the same way as the standard print function:

>>> print("Test") Test >>> eprint("Test") Test >>> eprint("foo", "bar", "baz", sep="---") foo---bar---baz