What does print(... sep='', '\t' ) mean?

Question

I am having a bit of trouble trying to find an answer to this. I would like to know what the syntax sep="" and \t means. I have found some informaion about it but I didn't quite understand what the purpose of using the syntax was. I'm looking for an explanation of what it does and when / why you would use it.

An example of sep='' being used:

print('Property tax: $', format(tax, ',.2f'), sep='') 

Solution 1

sep='' in the context of a function call sets the named argument sep to an empty string. See the print() function; sep is the separator used between multiple values when printing. The default is a space (sep=' '), this function call makes sure that there is no space between Property tax: $ and the formatted tax floating point value.

Compare the output of the following three print() calls to see the difference

>>> print('foo', 'bar')
foo bar
>>> print('foo', 'bar', sep='')
foobar
>>> print('foo', 'bar', sep=' -> ')
foo -> bar

All that changed is the sep argument value.

\t in a string literal is an escape sequence for tab character, horizontal whitespace, ASCII codepoint 9.

\t is easier to read and type than the actual tab character. See the table of recognized escape sequences for string literals.

Using a space or a \t tab as a print separator shows the difference:

>>> print('eggs', 'ham')
eggs ham
>>> print('eggs', 'ham', sep='\t')
eggs    ham

Solution 2

sep='' ignore whiteSpace. see the code to understand.Without sep=''

from itertools import permutations
s,k = input().split()
for i in list(permutations(sorted(s), int(k))):
    print(*i)

output:

HACK 2
A C
A H
A K
C A
C H
C K
H A
H C
H K
K A
K C
K H

using sep='' The code and output.

from itertools import permutations
s,k = input().split()
for i in list(permutations(sorted(s), int(k))):
    print(*i,sep='')

output:

HACK 2
AC
AH
AK
CA
CH
CK
HA
HC
HK
KA
KC
KH

Comments

[krona]

print('Property tax: $', format(tax, ',.2f'), sep='') would be an example of a line of code its used in.

[Martijn Pieters]

@krona: sep='' is not the same thing as sep"". See the print() function documenation; the code sets the sep keyword argument to an empty string.

[Martijn Pieters]

@Noumenon: In Python 2, use from __future__ import print_function; this is not limited to just Python 3. The question was using print() as a function, hence my tailoring to that case.

[Noumenon]

By the same logic any Python 2 answer is also good for Python 3 because 2to3 exists. You're causing confusion for Python 2 users by rejecting the edit. I will tag the question as Python 3, but no one ever notices that.

[Martijn Pieters]

@Noumenon: there is always going to be some confusion between the two versions. I do link to the function documentation, I call it a function and not a statement, etc.