Python: Printing a simple function [duplicate]

Answer 1

It works like this, because:

print output1()

means that you want to print the RESULT of the function (ie. the value of return).

And because there is no return in your function, by default it's None.

def output1():
   print "Hello, world!"
def output2():
   print "Hello, there!"
   return "Something"

print output1()
print output2()

Would result in:

Hello, world!
None
Hello, there!
Something

Answer 2

A function can have a return value: you call the function and it returns something back to where it was called.

A function returns None by default in Python.

You're now also printing the return value of output1 and output2.

You can read more about this in this section of the Python language tutorial.