is print a function in Python?

Question

In python everything is an object and you can pass it around easily.

So I can do :

>> def b():
   ....print "b"
>> a = b
>> a()
   b

But if I do

a = print

I get SyntaxError . Why so ?

Answer 1

In Python 2.x, print is a statement not a function. In 2.6+ you can enable it to be a function within a given module using from __future__ import print_function. In Python 3.x it is a function that can be passed around.

Answer 2

In python2, print is a statement. If you do from __future__ import print_function, you can do as you described. In python3, what you tried works without any imports, since print was made a function.

This is covered in PEP3105