Output with print()

You already know that print() displays text on the screen. Here are some useful techniques:

Multiple values with commas

You can print several values separated by commas. Python automatically adds a space between them:

name = "Alice"
age = 14
print("My name is", name, "and I am", age, "years old")

Output: My name is Alice and I am 14 years old

Concatenation with +

When you use +, you must make sure all values are strings. No spaces are added automatically:

name = "Alice"
print("Hello, " + name + "!")

Output: Hello, Alice!

Multi-line output

You can print across multiple lines using triple quotes:

print("""Line one
Line two
Line three""")

The input() Function

The input() function prompts the user to enter data, which is then stored in a variable:

name = input("What is your name? ")
print("Hello,", name)

When this runs, the program pauses and waits for the user to type something and press Enter.

Important: input() always returns a string

No matter what the user types, the result is always a string (str). Even if they type a number, it comes back as text:

age = input("How old are you? ")
# age is a string, e.g. "14", not the integer 14

If you need to do arithmetic with the input, you must convert it using int() or float() — we will cover this shortly.

Combining Input and Output

Here is a complete example that asks for the user’s name and favourite food:

name = input("What is your name? ")
print("Nice to meet you,", name)
food = input("What is your favourite food? ")
print("Ah, your favourite food is", food)