Why cannot pass print function to dir() in python?

Question

Is print a built-in function? If it is, why I cannot run dir(print)? dir is a built-in function and dir(dir) works well. So it looks very strange to me that dir(print) could not work.

Answer 1

In python 2 print is a statement and not a function and you can't put a statement as a function argument, in the other hand in python3 print is a function so you can do dir(print).