The `print' Statement
=====================

   The `print' statement does output with simple, standardized
formatting.  You specify only the strings or numbers to be printed, in a
list separated by commas.  They are output, separated by single spaces,
followed by a newline.  The statement looks like this:

     print ITEM1, ITEM2, ...

The entire list of items may optionally be enclosed in parentheses.  The
parentheses are necessary if any of the item expressions uses a
relational operator; otherwise it could be confused with a redirection
(see Redirecting Output of `print' and `printf': Redirection.).  The
relational operators are `==', `!=', `<', `>', `>=', `<=', `~' and `!~'
(see Comparison Expressions: Comparison Ops.).

   The items printed can be constant strings or numbers, fields of the
current record (such as `$1'), variables, or any `awk' expressions.
The `print' statement is completely general for computing *what* values
to print.  With two exceptions, you cannot specify *how* to print
them--how many columns, whether to use exponential notation or not, and
so on.  (See Output Separators, and *Note Controlling Numeric
Output with `print': OFMT.) For that, you need the `printf' statement
(see Using `printf' Statements for Fancier Printing: Printf.).

   The simple statement `print' with no items is equivalent to `print
$0': it prints the entire current record.  To print a blank line, use
`print ""', where `""' is the null, or empty, string.

   To print a fixed piece of text, use a string constant such as
`"Hello there"' as one item.  If you forget to use the double-quote
characters, your text will be taken as an `awk' expression, and you
will probably get an error.  Keep in mind that a space is printed
between any two items.

   Most often, each `print' statement makes one line of output.  But it
isn't limited to one line.  If an item value is a string that contains a
newline, the newline is output along with the rest of the string.  A
single `print' can make any number of lines this way.