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Python

Posted by Paula Wills
Paula Wills
2,893 Points

help(print) function not working in my terminal (mac)

When I type help(print) in my mac terminal, I get: File "<stdin>", line 1 help(print) ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Are you using workspaces's terminal or are you using your personal terminal?

3 Answers

andren
andren
28,558 Points

By default Mac OS ships with Python 2, not Python 3 which is used and thought on Treehouse. In Python 2 print is not technically a function like it is in Python 3, but instead a statement. It can still be used similarly to a function, but internally it is not classified as such.

That is why the help command does not work. If you want to see the help page for statements you have to enclose the name of the statement in quotes like this:

help('print')

That will produce the help page for the print statement in Python 2.

valerakushnir
valerakushnir
2,265 Points

Spot on, thank you!

Paula Wills
Paula Wills
2,893 Points
Paula Wills
Paula Wills
2,893 Points

Personal. It works in worksheets, but not in my personal terminal.

Paula Wills
Paula Wills
2,893 Points
Paula Wills
Paula Wills
2,893 Points

Thank you so much for explaining this!