List Comprehension: why is this a syntax error?

list-comprehension, python, python-2.6

Solution

Because print is not a function, it's a statement, and you can't have them in expressions. This gets more obvious if you use normal Python 2 syntax:

my_list=[1,2,3]
[print my_item for my_item in my_list]

That doesn't look quite right. :) The parenthesizes around my_item tricks you.

This has changed in Python 3, btw, where print is a function, where your code works just fine.

Problem

Why is `print(x)` here not valid (`SyntaxError`) in the following list-comprehension? ``` my_list=[1,2,3] [print(my_item) for my_item in my_list] ``` To contrast - the following doesn't give a syntax error: ``` def my_func(x): print(x) [my_func(my_item) for my_item in my_list] ```

Original source