syntax error in python script

Question

I wrote the following script, which generates a SyntaxError:

#!/usr/bin/python
print "Enter the filename: "
filename = raw_input("> ")
print "Here is your file %r: ", % filename
txt = open(filename)
print txt.read()
txt.close()

Here is the error:

 File "ex02.py", line 4
 print "Here is your file %r: ", % filename
 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

How should I fix this?

• John Eipe: thanks everyone. it was a stupid mistake. Just starting out with python :)

Answer 1

You can't have a comma there.

print ("Here is your file %r: " % filename),

• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: @Abhranil: A comma at the end of a print statement changes the terminator from a newline to a space.
• Abhranil Das: Oh good, I didn't know that! And what if I don't want even a space, do you know how to do that?
• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: @Abhranil: You'd write directly to sys.stdout.

Answer 2

The coma is not needed, try:

filename = raw_input("> ")
print "Here is your file %r: " % filename

• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: Actually, the comma probably is needed. It just can't go there.

Answer 3

The trouble lies here:

print "Here is your file %r: ", % filename
 ^

When print finds a comma, it uses that as an argument separator, as can be seen with:

>>> print 1,2
1 2

In that case, the next argument needs to be valid and the sequence % filename is not.

What you undoubtedly meant was:

print "Here is your file %r: " % filename

as per the following transcript:

>>> filename = "whatever"
>>> print "file is %r", % filename
 File "<stdin>", line 1
 print "file is %r", % filename
 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> print "file is %r" % filename
file is 'whatever'

• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: A comma at the end of a print statement changes the terminator from a newline to a space.
• Karl Knechtel: Of course, this changes in 3.x, where print becomes an actual function.