Learning Python for Sage

Question

Hi, I'm no expert in Python or Sage, but I want to learn Python specifically to help with Sage. I bought a book on Python programming and I'm trying out some of the stuff in Sage. But, some of it doesn't seem to work. So, I'm wondering... is this because Sage doesn't use Python 3 yet, or are there just some things with Python that don't work in Sage? If it's the second one, how can I know what's going to work and what's not? For example, in the book I have it says I should be able to do:

print("stuff stuff", end = " ")
print("stuff stuff")

and the effect is that instead of ending the print statement with "\n", it ends with a space so the second print statement prints on the same line. But, doing this in Sage 4.7 results in a syntax error, and it appears to not like the =.

Thanks

Accepted Answer

print("stuff stuff", end = " ") is certainly not valid in Python 2, and Sage is using Python 2, and switching is not going to happen soon.

Actually, print is not a function in Python 2, so it's not that it doesn't like '=', it doesn't like (), etc.

You can see few most common differences between Python versions 2 and 3 explained here: http://docs.python.org/release/3.0.1/whatsnew/3.0.html

Answer 2

3	You might like looking at this book, which is the Python 2.x version of a very popular intro text. link posted Sep 02 '11 kcrisman 6784 ● 14 ● 67 ● 152

Answer 3

Even in Python 2.7, you could import the print function from the future Python:

sage: from __future__ import print_function
sage: print("stuff stuff", end = " ")
stuff stuff sage: print("stuff stuff", end = " \n@\n")
stuff stuff 
@
sage:

Learning Python for Sage

3 Answers:

Your answer

Question tools

Tags:

Stats:

Related questions