How to Fix Missing Parentheses in Print Error in Python

We will discuss the missing parentheses in call to 'print' error in Python. This error is a compile-time syntax error.

See the code below.

print "Something"

Output:

SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'. Did you mean print("Something")?

Whenever this error is encountered, remember to use parentheses while printing.

For example,

print("Something")

Output:

Something

Let us now discuss what happened.

Python 3 was a major update for the Python language since a lot of new changes were introduced. One such change was the need to use the parentheses with the print() function. In Python 2, there was no such need.

This change is because, in Python 2, the print was a statement and was changed to a function in Python 3. That is why we need to use parentheses as we do in a normal function call.

This change was considered an improvement because it allowed adding parameters like sep within the print() function.

In earlier versions of Python 3, whenever the print() function was encountered without parentheses, a generic SyntaxError: invalid syntax error was raised. However, this was a little ambiguous because an invalid syntax error can be raised for many reasons.

The error was changed to SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print' to avoid any confusion.